Turn Us Again (7 page)

Then they came for me

and there was no one left

to speak out for me.

People do not speak out enough in our world. They are too frightened. Mummy does not see it this way, and she is suffering on my behalf. I must remember that Mummy's life is hard and she cannot escape, as I have. Daddy seems to be drinking as much as ever, same old tension in the house. I should be brimming with sympathy and love for my mother, instead of irritation. Yet, yet
…
there is something cold and repellent in the way she deals with life. I am impulsive and generous like Daddy. Does he find her cold? Does her coldness drive him to drink? I mustn't even think that. I am selfishly angry because Mummy is unselfishly worried about my future
.
Daddy has terrible failings. I will not screw up my life the way he has ruined his. And that begs the question — am I screwing up my life already? Is it selfish and stupid to throw away three years of training? It is not too late yet to change my mind. I have already spoken out in any case
.

Sundays were always the same. Church in the mornings, then Eddie would pop into the pub for a pint while the women prepared the traditional Sunday dinner — roast beef, mashed potatoes and watery cabbage, rounded off with rice pudding. When it was ready, Anne and her mother sat and waited in the small, dark dining room, while Pippa lay at their feet, twisting her head to gaze mournfully at each of them in turn. They sat in silence, ears strained for any sound. They didn't look at one another, instead perusing the table cloth or the furniture. When Anne was younger, she would feel hatred and resentment against her father billowing in her chest. She would steal glances at her mother's tense face, and the resentment would gradually transfer to her. If she were married to a man like Eddie she could cure him, or at least control him a little better! If only her mother would talk to her husband about how his drinking affected her life, then he would make an effort. Instead, Mary never discussed the drinking at all, treating it as if it didn't exist. If anyone else mentioned it, a suffering look came over her face, as though the subject was too shameful to talk about. How could a man get better under such circumstances, living under a cloud of disapproval, a pariah in his own home? Even now, waiting while the Sunday meal over-cooked in the oven, Mary's face was expressionless. She might have been looking at a dress in a shop window.

Living away from home had plucked Anne from the nucleus of the wound, allowing her to feel triumphantly indifferent. She looked around the dining room with new eyes, as though she had never seen the familiar objects before. A mirror hung above the massive Victorian sideboard with its brass gong and heavy fruit bowl. The bowl rarely contained fruit. Instead it was filled with an assortment of buttons, bits of string, coins, and bills that had to be paid at some time, but not yet. A large framed photograph hung on another wall: a young woman in a wedding dress smiling shyly at the handsome naval officer by her side. The veil was low on her forehead and she held a lavish beribboned bouquet. They looked so hopeful and happy. Anne regarded the picture with contempt. How people allowed their dreams to shatter. So much hope in those young, handsome faces — now one was frozen in a perpetual frown of displeasure and the other wore a mask of sheepish humiliation, all pride driven out by weakness and the implacable contempt of his wife. This would never happen to her. She was beautiful and young, the world was her oyster.

Outside, rain lashed the windows and the wind tossed the lilac trees at the bottom of the garden. The table was laid carelessly with knives and forks, and even serviettes and serviette rings. But a general weariness pervaded the effort. The table cloth was stained and one of the serviettes had lost its ring and lay folded unevenly beside the plate.

Anne's feeling of detachment began to fade as the minutes ticked by. She felt herself returning to her old habit of listening to the silence with her mother. Listening for the sound of the key in the lock.

At 1:30 Mary got up to put the dinner on the table.

“Lest it be completely spoiled,” she explained.

“It's still like this every Sunday?”

“Most Sundays. Did you think it would change, now you've left?”

In truth she had forgotten. Her Sundays were so different now. The unbearableness of her mother's life hit her.

“Leave him, Mummy. Why don't you leave him?”

“It's an illness. If I left him, he would end up in the gutter.”

They sat down to their Sunday meal and ate in silence, still listening, listening. Pippa sat with her head in Anne's lap. Whenever Anne glanced down Pippa would remove her intense gaze from the fork's movement between plate and mouth and fix it on Anne's left shoulder. In no way am I begging for treats, her aloof expression declared, I am much too dignified for that. However, if a morsel should fall perchance onto your knee...

A morsel sometimes did, and Pippa snapped up such offerings with alacrity, instantly resuming her
en garde
position.

Eventually they heard it, the key in the lock. All senses froze, hearts beating. The sound of the key indicated the state he was in. A great deal of fumbling, accompanied by soft swearing at the impossible smallness of the keyhole and the slipperiness of the key, meant he was quite far along. These efforts inevitably ended in failure, whereupon he would bang at the door and shout for them to open the door and fix this damn lock. Today the fumbling phase was short, though he stumbled against the step which had always been there. Anne and her mother emitted a simultaneous sigh of relief. Not too drunk today.

Eddie came into the silence with a bright, painful smile. Pippa rushed to greet him, another indication of his state. When he was very drunk, she hid underneath the table.

In silence, Mary carried a plate of congealing meat and gravy from the oven. No one spoke as he poured Yorkshire relish over his dinner, bent his head low over his plate and began to shovel the food into his mouth.

The air was heavy with the smell of whisky, beer and stale cabbage. Anne opened the window to let the rain and a welcome smell of damp earth blow in. Eddie sat with his defeated, bowed head.

“Go and have your rest” Mary said, and he climbed the stairs, leaning on the banister.

In the evening they played bridge, game after game. Before she left home, Anne thought the endless bridge evenings were a bore, instigated by her mother to entice Eddie, who loved a gamble, to stay put for the evening. She realized now, leaning forward in her chair and trying to memorize which trumps had been played, that she adored the game. Wildly competitive, she could just about manage to be a good winner — withholding her screams of glee with difficulty — but was a terrible loser.

“I've had rotten hands all evening. It's hard to believe the cards haven't been tampered with,” she would announce. Or, “You always bet way too high, Daddy, even when you have awful hands. He's misleading us, isn't he Mummy?”

And Mary, who wanted them both to win equally (and herself never), would smile and underbid her own hand. Each round became an ordeal, as trump card after trump card fell from her fingers.

“Oh for God's sake, Mummy! Why did you pass with five trumps in your hand?”

“Tsk tsk tsk, Mary. What a shame.
What
a shame.”

She was never spared. Her hands were always wonderful.

Standing side by side washing the dishes a couple of days later, Mary turned to Anne: “I don't have a profession, and this means I am dependent on my husband. You have the opportunity to have a respectable profession, and must not throw it away.” It was almost as though she was challenging Anne's complacent surety about how much better her own life was going to be.

“Oh Mummy, I can work at all sorts of things. I could get a job at the nursing home as a nurses' aide tomorrow.”

“You might be an RN, with more responsibility and a larger salary. You only have a few weeks to go. You must go back.”

“It's too late now. They won't let me come back.”

“It's not just the work. There are many young men in Cambridge…” her mother hesitated in embarrassment, hoping that her Victorian upbringing was keeping her impetuous, passionate daughter to the straight and narrow. “You cannot assume they won't let you come back. You must ask.”

“I can't. I couldn't bear it if Matron was rude to me. Dear Mummy, couldn't you phone her? You don't know her, so it wouldn't be so terrible for you.”

Even as she spoke, Anne knew just how terrible it would be. Her gentle, undemonstrative mother asking what amounted to a favour from a woman she didn't know! Yet Anne didn't move as her mother got up quietly and went to the phone. She didn't stop her when Mary told Matron how much Anne loved nursing, how she had always wanted to be a nurse, how hard the stress and pressure was for a person of Anne's sensitivity. She winced when her mother hinted at a difficult home situation, sensing the pain these revelations would cause, yet at the same time amused by the duplicity of her mother, invoking sympathy even though her father's drinking had nothing to do with anything.

“Please take her back,” said her mother, and as good as “she will behave herself now.”

Then there was a moment of quiet, and her mother said, “Thank you.”

“What did she say?” asked Anne.

“She said she would allow herself to be persuaded because you are an exceptional worker and possess a knack for forging warm relationships with your patients.”

“Really? She said that?”

“Yes,” and Mary beamed at her daughter, pride triumphing over the weariness in her face.

Matron allowed Anne to return, and put her straight back into Casualty.

Samuel was waiting for her the first time she went to Dorothy's. He strode over and took her elbow, steering her away from the other men. Anne acquiesced, since they were headed in the agreeable direction of the bar.

“Where have you been?” he demanded, with an edge of anger in his voice.

“Oh, Matron made me work in Casualty, even though she knew I hated it, so I went home.” She smiled up at him, draining her glass of cider. She didn't tell him about her mother's phone call. In the end, she rather despised her mother for talking to Matron.

“I wanted to see you. I came here every day in the hope that you would be here — the most beautiful woman in Cambridge dancing like a free spirit. You must give me a phone number where I can reach you so this sort of thing never happens again. I felt desperate!”

The intensity of the man's feelings surprised anew. It was so flattering to hear proclamations of desire, want, need, and sense they were genuine. Anne found herself agreeing to see him, making dates for several evenings that week.

“I know you prefer to dance, but there's an interesting lecture tomorrow night which I hoped you would attend with me. Everyone needs to expand their minds, you know, and in your case the improvement would be the more satisfying.”

“How do you mean?” asked Anne, afraid she was going to hear something disparaging about her mind.

“It would equalize your mind with the superiority of your soul and the perfection of your face.”

Anne smiled at Samuel. Was she willing to give her mind over to his care, trusting him to guide her towards maturity and understanding, instead of struggling blindly towards it by herself? She agreed to go to a film with him, and to a political meeting, and especially she agreed when it was understood that every outing was to be complemented by steak and gin in Samuel's rooms.

Samuel dominated the talking during these evenings, discoursing about ideas one minute and about her importance to him the next. Anne sat in a little chair and drank from the smaller cup, which didn't matter because Samuel filled it up scrupulously as soon as she drained the last drop.

He struggled to divide the cuts of meat equally, lending his intense nature to the most trivial aspects of life.

“The person who does not cut the meat should choose the first portion, in order to ensure that the cutter strives for equality in size,” he insisted. “I think they are the same, but choose carefully. Choose carefully!”

Anne always pointed to the piece which looked smaller, though Samuel was unaware of this and continued to sweat over the equal division.

“That's a good choice, Anne, but can I just point out that the one you chose has a bone attached to it, so it looks bigger, but in fact isn't because the bone doesn't count.”

“I didn't think it was bigger because of the bone. I thought it was smaller.”

“I tried very hard to make them the same.”

“It doesn't matter, Sam. I'll take the bone.”

And she continued to choose the bones, until one day he seized the bone from her plate as soon as she had finished, and began to gnaw on it. Anne was not used to such table manners, and he noticed her look of surprise.

“You've left half the meat on the bone. You can't get it all off with the fork, you have to pick it up and chew. It takes skill to strip a bone.”

Anne thought he was idiosyncratic and accepted this as normal among clever Cambridge students, even if she regretted that his individuality expressed itself in ways she found revolting. She tried not to be shocked at his habit of peeing outside whenever they came home late. He did try, in a poetic style, to explain the joys of outdoor pissing, but she only saw the malodourous puddle in the middle of a public street.