‘Could you hear?’
‘I’m not quite deaf yet,’ said my mother, stuffing in the flickering light, smiling with affronted humour, as she did when, at nearly fifty, she heard herself described as middle-aged. Her physical vanity and her instinctive hold on youth had not abandoned her. ‘What was she shouting about?’
‘Nothing to worry you,’ I said.
‘Please to tell me,’ said my mother. She sounded exhausted, but she was still imperious.
‘Really, it’s nothing, Mother.’
‘Was it about Za’s money?’ Her intuition stayed quick, realistic, suspicious. She knew she had guessed right. ‘Please to tell me, dear.’
I told her, as lightly as I could. My mother smiled, angry but half-amused.
‘Milly is a donkey,’ she said. ‘You’re to do nothing of the sort.’
‘Of course, I shouldn’t think of it.’
‘Remember, it’s some of the money I ought to have had. Please think of it as money I’ve given you. You’re to use it to make your way. I hope I see you do it.’ Her tone was firm, quiet, unshaken, and yet worried, I noticed, with discomfort, how easily she became out of breath. After saying those words to me, she had to breathe hard.
‘It’s a great comfort to me’, she went on, ‘to see the money come to you, dear. It’s your chance. We shall have to think how you’re going to take it. You mustn’t waste it. Remember that you’re not to waste it.’
‘We won’t do anything till you get better,’ I said.
‘I hope it won’t be too long,’ said my mother, and I caught the tone again, unshaken but apprehensive.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.
‘I’m not getting on as fast as I should like,’ said my mother.
As I said good night, she told me: ‘I’m angry with myself. I don’t like lying here. It’s time I made myself get well.’
She was undaunted enough to tell Aunt Milly, on each of the next two days, that I was on no account to spend any of the legacy in getting my father’s discharge. My mother stated haughtily that it was not to happen. She explained to Aunt Milly that it was only right and just for her son to possess ‘her money’, and that money must be used to give him a start. In a few years, Lewis would be able to settle Bertie’s affairs without thinking twice.
Aunt Milly had to restrain herself, and listen without protest. For by this time she, like all of us, realized that my mother might not live.
She seemed to have, Dr Francis explained to me, the kind of heart failure that comes to much older people. If she recovered, she would have to spend much of her time lying down, so as to rest the heart. At present it was only working strongly enough just to keep her going without any drain of energy whatever.
From our expressions, from the very air in the house, my mother knew that she was in danger. Her hope was still fierce and courageous. She insisted that she was ‘better in herself’. Impatiently she dismissed what she called ‘minor symptoms’, such as the swelling of her ankles; her ankles had swollen even though she lay in bed and had not set foot on the floor for three weeks.
One Sunday morning Dr Francis spent a long time upstairs. Aunt Milly, my father and I sat silently in the front room.
Dr Francis had come early that morning, so as not to miss the service. The church bell was already ringing when he joined us in the front room. He had left his hat on the table, the tall hat in which he always went to church, the only one in the congregation. I thought he had come to take it, and would not stay with us. Instead, he sat down by the table and ran his white, plump fingers over the cloth. The skin of his face was pink, and the pink flush seemed to shade up to the top of his bald dome. His expression was stern, resentful, and commanding.
‘Mr Eliot, I must tell you now,’ he said. His voice was hoarse as well as high.
‘Yes, doctor?’ said my father.
‘I’m afraid she isn’t going to get over it,’ said Dr Francis.
The church bell had just stopped and the room was so quiet that it seemed to have gone darker.
‘Isn’t she, doctor?’ said my father helplessly. Dr Francis shook his head with a heavy frown.
‘How long has she got?’ said Aunt Milly, in a tone subdued for her but still instinct with action.
‘I can’t tell you, Mrs Riddington,’ said Dr Francis. ‘She won’t let herself go easily. Yes, she’ll fight to the last.’
‘How long do you think?’ Aunt Milly insisted.
‘I don’t think it can be many weeks,’ said Dr Francis slowly. ‘I don’t think any of us ought to wish it to be long, for her sake.’
‘Does she know?’ I cried.
‘Yes, Lewis, she knows.’ He was gentler to me than to Aunt Milly; his resentment, his almost sulky sense of defeat, he put away.
‘You’ve told her this morning?’
‘Yes. She asked me to tell her the truth. She’s a brave soul. I don’t tell some people, but I thought I had to, with your mother.’
‘How did she take it?’ I said, trying to seem controlled.
‘I hope I do as well,’ said Dr Francis. ‘If it happens to me like this.’
Dr Francis had deposited his gloves within his tall hat, Now he took them out, and gradually pulled on the left-hand one, concentrating on each fold in the leather.
‘She asked me to give you a message,’ he said as though casually to my father. ‘She would like to see Lewis before anyone else.’
My father nodded, submissively.
‘I should give her a few minutes, if I were you,’ said Dr Francis to me. ‘I expect she’ll want to get ready for you. She doesn’t like being seen when she’s upset, does she?’
He was thinking of me too. I could not reply. He gazed at me sharply, and clicked his tongue against his teeth in baffled sympathy. He pulled on the other glove and said that, though it was late, he would run along to church. He would get in before the first lesson. He said good morning to Aunt Milly, good morning to my father, put his hand on my arm. We saw him pass the window in short, quick, precise steps, his top hat gleaming, his plump cushioned body braced and erect.
‘Well,’ said Aunt Milly, ‘when the time comes, you will have to leave this house.’
‘I suppose we shall, Milly,’ my father said.
‘You’ll have to come to me. I can manage the three of you.’
‘It’s very good of you, Milly, I’m sure.’
‘You two might have to share a room. I’ll set about moving things,’ said my aunt, satisfied that there was a practical step to take.
Then the clock struck the half-hour. My father did not repeat his ritual phrase. Instead he said: ‘Lena didn’t use to like the clock, did she? She used to say “Confound the clock. Confound the clock, Bertie.” That’s what she used to say. “Confound the clock.” I’ve always liked it myself, but she never did.’
My mother’s head and shoulders had been propped up by pillows, in order to make her breathing easier — so that, asleep or awake, she was half-sitting, and when I drew up a chair that Sunday morning, her eyes looked down into mine.
They were very bright, her eyes, and the whites clear. The skin of her face was a waxy ochreous cream, and the small veins were visible upon her cheeks, as they sometimes are on the tough and weather-beaten. She gave me the haughty humorous smile which she used so often to pass off a remark which had upset her.
Outside, it was a windy April day, changing often from sunlight to shade. When I went in the room was dark; but, before my mother spoke, the houses opposite the window, the patch of ground between them, stood brilliant in the spring sunshine, and the light was reflected on to my mother’s face.
‘When it’s your time, it’s your time,’ said my mother. She was speaking with difficulty, as though she had to think hard about each word, and then could not trust her lips and tongue to frame it. I knew — with the tight, constrained, dreadful feeling that overcame me when she called out for my love, for in her presence I could not let the tears start, unbidden, spontaneously, as they did when Dr Francis spoke of her courage — that she had rehearsed the remark to greet me with.