Every Day Is Mother's Day (2 page)

Presently Evelyn leaned forward, her hands clasped together, her eyes closed, and scalding tears dropped from under her lids. Mrs. Sidney watched them falling. Her heart hammered. Evelyn’s mouth gaped open, and Mrs. Sidney dug her nails into her palms, expecting Arthur’s voice to come out.

Evelyn dropped back in her chair. Her pale eyes snapped open, and she spoke in a perfectly normal voice.

“I told you not to come to me for reassurance, Mrs. Sidney. Go to the Spiritualist Church if you like. It’s in Ruskin Road. They have a cold buffet afterwards.” She got heavily to her feet. Mrs. Sidney lurched after her, past the empty china cabinet and the dead potplant, stumbling to the door.

“Mrs. Sidney,” Evelyn said, “your husband Arthur is roasting in some unspeakable hell.”

She closed the door. I shall give this up, she thought. They come here, for a Cook’s Tour of the other world; as if it were in some other but accessible place, they use me like an aero-plane, like a cruise liner. But it was here, a little removed yet concurrent; each day some limb of the supernatural reached out to pluck you by the clothes. I shall give it up, she thought,
because it is making me ill; if one day I took some sort of fit and were laid up, what would happen, who would look after Muriel?

AXON, MURIEL ALEXANDRA

DATE OF BIRTH: 4•4•40

2
B
UCKINGHAM
A
VENUE

Miss Axon was visited at her home by Miss Perkins of this Department on 3•3•73 and subsequently by CWD on 15•3•73. Client lives with her widowed mother, Mrs. Evelyn Axon. Her father died in 1946. They are resident in a comfortable detached house with all usual amenities. Client attended St. David’s School, Arlington Road, 1945–1955, but her attendance seems to have been nominal as her mother states she was “more often absent.” Mrs. Axon states that she was informed about 1946 or 1947 that Muriel did not seem to have the normal aptitude for her age-group, and she was kept behind a class for two subsequent years. At this point it appears client should have been designated ESN under the provisions of the 1944 Act, but this was not done and it is suggested that at this point in time she appeared in a borderline normality situation. Mrs. Axon states that she considered that client had been adversely affected by her father’s death at six years old and that “she would not have benefited” from special provision. During the years following Mr. Hutchinson, then School Attendance Officer, visited the house on several occasions but unfortunately these records cannot be traced in the files of the newly constituted Education Welfare Department. (Query check County Hall.) According to Mrs. Axon client was referred (by Mr. Hutchinson) to the Gresham Trust which prior to the takeover of its functions by the Local Authority dealt with the welfare of the subnormal in the community. Client was visited by a caseworker of the Trust, a Miss Blackstone, and Mrs. Axon states that tests were given to the client but that she refused to participate in them. Mrs. Axon states that the visits of the Trust
ceased after one year and there appear to be no records of client as it does not seem to have been the policy of the Trust to keep records for more than five years.

Client appears physically fit. Mrs. Axon states that other than the usual childhood illnesses she has never been seriously ill, never been hospitalised, and has not had occasion to visit her GP in the last ten years or possibly more. Mrs. Axon is in general very vague about dates. Mrs. Axon states that Muriel is able to wash and dress herself but will “put on anything” and that she has to supervise her washing and also her meals as she will eat unsuitable food. However she is able to help in the house though Mrs. Axon states she is not very willing. She is sometimes taken shopping by Mrs. Axon but not frequently. Mrs. Axon states that client is not able to go out alone because of various incidents that have occurred in the past, but she would not go into any further details about this.

Mrs. Axon is extremely uncommunicative in herself and this is seen as a problem in assessment. According to Mrs. Axon client is able to understand everything that is said to her but often does not answer when she is spoken to. She has no hobbies or pastimes. Difficulties in this case are increased by the uncooperative and almost hostile attitude of Mrs. Axon, who seems to resent any intervention by welfare agencies. Client’s environment seems to be unstimulating and Mrs. Axon seems to be ashamed of her to the extent that she is unwilling for her to be seen by neighbours. Her attitude to her seems to be one of basic contempt and that client does not have ordinary feelings, for instance she referred to client in her hearing as a “hopeless idiot.” It must be said that client appears to be adequately fed and clothed and that although Mrs. Axon’s standards of housekeeping are not high she does attend to client’s physical welfare, but she seems to have a negative attitude to client’s mental and emotional development and it is unlikely that any significant improvement will take place unless Muriel is
encouraged to mix a little more with other people and acquire social confidence.

Recommendations: Multi-professional assessment

Day care

C. W. D.

One year on; noises from above. They are hard at work again, always at work. Sometimes, as today, in one room of the house, shrieking with laughter and tossing her possessions. Or following her from room to room.

Pulling her fawn cardigan about her, Evelyn lumbered over to the calendar. Woolly lambs pranced in a meadow impossibly green, roses bloomed around the door of a thatched cottage. She searched for the month. All the Thursdays were ringed in red; it was a task she had set herself when this last bout of interference with their lives began, over a year ago now. And today was Thursday.

Now for the hallway. She flicked on the light. It seemed empty. As she moved to the foot of the stairs something grazed her sleeve, and she pulled away. Go, go, she thought savagely; I did not invite you here. A bloody handprint stained the cream emulsion, the leprous skull grinned behind glass. Mr. Sidney’s twisted mouth, in another place. Never again.

She mounted the stairs heavily. Her rheumatism was worse this year, in the raw damp April weather; every day sodden petals from the flowering trees flurried across the window, and thrushes sang in the neglected garden. I am sixty-eight, she thought, I am feeling my age this year.

“Don’t you know it’s Thursday?” Evelyn said sharply. Muriel raised her head. She nodded. Evelyn appraised her; the lank black hair cut straight across her forehead, the coarse flaking skin, the ungainly legs and large red hands. Whatever they say, she thought, she has not improved. Whatever they say, is rubbish. “Well, then, we must sort you out some clothes.”

A sign of animation crossed Muriel’s face. She got up. Crossing to her chest of drawers, she proffered Evelyn her pink
cardigan of fluffy wool. Evelyn nodded without interest. “If you like.”

Something caught her eye. She plunged her hand into the drawer and delved for the metallic glint. She held it in her palm as if it were contaminated; a tin of furniture polish, half-used, its waxy rag still stuck inside it.

“Did you put it there?”

Muriel’s pale grey eyes gazed at her. She showed neither guilt, nor fear, nor surprise. Evelyn believed her. Muriel never did anything of her own volition; Muriel never lied.

“They’ve been in here, then?” She reached out to grasp Muriel’s arm above the elbow, squeezing it hard. She was a strong woman. Her fingers bit into the flesh. Muriel blinked at her. “Did you see them?” She shook her daughter’s arm. “Tell me what they did.”

Evelyn’s pulse raced. Until now they had never been in this room. But now here was the proof of it, the tin taken some weeks ago. It was always the same kind of trick; the spilt sugar, the small thefts, the china they had smashed piece by piece. She let Muriel’s arm go and it fell limp at her side.

“I could move you from here. But where would you go? They are always getting into my bedroom.”

Muriel said that there was a third bedroom. Evelyn stared at her. She could feel again her heart hammering and pounding in her throat. The woman had made a shocked face when she had called Muriel an idiot. She, Evelyn, lived with the daily confirmation of her idiocy. Only a hopeless idiot would suggest she take up residence in a room already tenanted; and such tenants. “Wash yourself,” she commanded her. She went downstairs.

At ten past one she called up to Muriel. Muriel came down. She wore the fluffy pink cardigan and a red skirt. She showed none of the caution Evelyn used when she moved about the house. Sitting on the step next to the bottom, Muriel put out
her feet for her shoes to be laced, her legs stiff like a child’s in the dentist’s chair. There was something almost sly in Muriel’s face. But Evelyn never troubled to interpret her expressions; she could speak, if she wished, she could make herself clear.

“If you can make baskets, why can’t you tie your shoes?” Evelyn said brutally. Probably, she thought, the reason is that she cannot make baskets; if the other week’s example is anything to go by. She took Muriel to the door. She had only to walk fifty yards, along the bushes, around the corner to Lauderdale Road. Let her do that by herself, the Welfare woman had begged; to give her a little sense of independence. She had looked at the woman with contempt. In those days she had been very high-handed with them. She had underestimated their persistence. They had kept coming back. Now she was ready to do anything they said, to make the sacrifice of Muriel, if only it would stop them coming to the house, enquiring into the arrangements she found it necessary to make, the shifts and expedients by which she kept them washed and fed and warm from one day to the next; sniffing around with their implications that life could be improved.

She held the door open to watch Muriel out of the gate. Florence Sidney was passing, a stout, well-set-up woman. She had the house, now that her mother had been taken away to a home. It was Florence Sidney, Evelyn thought, who reported us to the Welfare. As if persons in our class of life needed the Welfare. Miss Sidney turned her bonneted head curiously, and Evelyn drew back and slammed the door. She turned to the house, alone; so often, in the 1940s, she had wished she were alone, and now her wish had come back to mock her, to gibber and tiptoe and hiss.

They had not eaten lunch. That was Muriel’s punishment for not speaking when she had been asked about the visitors to her room. Whether something she had seen had terrorised her into silence…Evelyn wondered if she had been unjust. It was too late. Still, she would have her tea and biscuits.

On the floor of the hall lay a crumpled piece of paper. Evelyn’s gorge rose. Low stinking entities, she said to herself. Once she had been able to smell them, but her senses were becoming blunter with age. Increasingly they were choosing this method of communication, this, their tricks, the sharp raps on the wall from different rooms of the house, warning her off by their noises or luring her by their silence. She stopped. Her face twisted. She tried always to avoid showing that she was in pain. It was agony for her to bend to the floor, they must know this. Evelyn looked around. She took her umbrella from the hallstand, and with it fished for the paper, dragging it from where she could not reach, like the intelligent ape in the experiment. From her feet, she scuttled the paper ball to the first stair, from there to the second. She picked it up and straightened it out. The wavering great letters were familiar by now, fly-track thin:
GO NOT TO THE KITCHIN TODAY
.

Evelyn’s heart sank. Like this, they prolonged her existence. They could take her at any time, kill her (broken neck at the foot of the stairs), or leave her a shell without faculties. But they preferred to watch her fear, her pathetic ruses, her flickering hopes which they would dash within the hour; that was the only explanation. Disconsolate, she entered the front parlour. There, placed precisely in the centre of the circular table, lay a tin-opener.

At once she thought, how provident. It was a matter in which she had been careless. She did not touch it, examined it with her eyes. It did not belong in the house, she had never seen it before. Carefully, she picked it up. It was new, quite new. It was the first time they had left her a gift.

She lowered the flap of the sideboard and took out a tin of baked beans. I must make better arrangements, she thought. The days when they forbade her the kitchen were becoming more frequent, they were driving her increasingly to the front parlour with its hard chairs where she had seen the dead. Perhaps, she thought, a paraffin stove. She opened the tin, and cast
around. To hand came the heavy glass ashtray, unused since Clifford died. She emptied the cold tan slime into it and sat eating the beans with her fingers. When she had finished she put down the ashtray and sat resting for a moment. Now where would she go, until it was time for Muriel again? The blue light bounced off polished wood. The air was silent, serene. Evelyn breathed deeply. All their ingenuity had satisfied itself, for the afternoon. Travelling around the room searching the corners, her eye fell on the basket which Muriel had brought home two weeks ago from the Handicapped Class. It was a very ill-made basket, very mis-shapen. Evelyn could not think what use to put it to. Because she was very considerate about Muriel’s feelings, she had not discarded it. Now she took it and hobbled out with it to the hall, where she placed it on the table, for display. As an afterthought, she lifted the dead plant in its plastic pot, and placed it inside.