Vacant Possession. Hilary Mantel
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her; they were not sure if she had spoken or not.
When Miss Sidney was out doing her telephoning, the brother and the social worker turned to each other. They acted as if no one was there; not her in the bedroom slippers, not Mother in a heap. They were people who had met before; their eyes met, and then their hands. She would not be surprised if they had not met on a go in the park. She had a grievance against the social worker, with her trim waist and pale pretty face. She herself was still bloated from her pregnancy, but the girl did not know that. The baby was something they’d kept to themselves; a private trial, which they had faced in their own way.
Miss Sidney was back now. She turned to Muriel. Now, Muriel, she said, I don’t want you to upset yourself, and what we could do with is a blanket to cover up your poor old mum. Let her shiver, Muriel thought, noticing that she did not. Already the grievances of a lifetime were rising up in her mind. Did other people live like this? She had no idea. The social worker said that the place was like a morgue. She bent over Mother, turning her head with her slim white hand. No one’s blaming you, she said to Colin Sidney; she’s had a heart attack. Mother’s face was a strange mottled colour; its expression was one of astonishment.
In the last few moments of Mother’s life, she, Muriel, had come up the stairs from the bottom. Whilst Mother was slipping, sliding, clutching with one hand at the banister and the other at her chest, she had knitted her fingers into the back of Mother’s cardigan, she had taken her by the scruff and bounced her slam, slam, against the wall; and this was why, when Mother died, she looked so surprised.
There were now more people in the house than Muriel could ever remember; more, at any rate, than since Father’s funeral. She had been only a child then; she had wondered why Clifford Axon couldn’t be buried at the back, outside the lean-to, but her mother had said no, she wanted him off the premises. Thirty years had passed; life was going to alter. In the midst of her speculations, her stomach rumbled again quite audibly. Murder makes me famished, she thought. She took a final look at her mother, then went into the kitchen and cut herself a piece of bread. She rummaged in the cupboards and found a pot of some kind of red jam. The old cow, she thought, she was keeping this for herself. There was quite a lot left, three-quarters of the pot. She got a knife from the cutlery drawer and spread the jam carefully, very thick and right to the edges of the bread. When Colin Sidney came in she offered him a bite, but he did not seem interested. She could hear the social worker being sick again. Vehicles drew up outside, and uniformed men took Evelyn away.
Soon after these events, Muriel left home herself. She understood that she would be going away for some years, to recuperate from her time with her mother. A woman called Tidmarsh collected her. She put a plastic bag in the boot of the car, containing Muriel’s personal effects; the two smocks that Mother had made for her out of a pair of old curtains, and a few other odds and ends she found in the drawers. Muriel looked back at the house where until now she had always lived. She felt a terrible sense of incompleteness, as if something that mattered to her had been abandoned in one of the rooms. She pawed at the woman’s arm, trying to get her to turn back, but the woman shook herself free and yelled out that they would have an accident. How was Muriel to know? She had never been in a car before, only the minibus.
Mother had always threatened her that if she didn’t do as she was told, she’d be rounded up with the other ne’er-do-wells, and taken off and gassed. It had happened once, Evelyn said; and the whole world profits by example. So was this it? She felt no emotion; she did not know what gassed would be like. She looked out at the factory walls as they passed, her head lolling against the glass, shaking with the vibrations of the car.
It was a mild spring day, but the women in the streets were still bundled into their heavy coats. They pushed children in trolleys, their heads bowed against the breeze. Sunlight dappled the glass of a bus shelter. The mill gates and little rows of shops gave way to an area of semi-detached houses with white painted fences and pretty flowering shrubs in the gardens. A red housing estate climbed up the side of a hill. Soon they were in the country. Miss Tidmarsh wound her window down, and the smell of fresh grass filled the car. They turned into a gateway, into a gravelled drive shaded by towering hedges. Clouds flew across the windscreen. The car nosed onwards, through the summer ahead; birds wheeled over the fields.
The house itself, a crumbling grey core, looked out over the fields and towards the road. Gravel paths ran away from it, with flower beds on either side. There were parked cars, an ambulance, a scatter of Nissen huts and sheds, and a colony of new buildings, made of metal and varnished wood and plate glass. Beyond these was a belt of dark trees, and more fields. There was a faint ground mist, and moisture in the air.
When the car stopped, Muriel scrambled out. ‘Hang on a minute,’ Miss Tidmarsh called. She took her by the elbow. It reminded her of Mother.
The paths were dotted with little signposts: Hunniford Ward, Greyshott Ward, Occupational Therapy. She did not have time to read them all, but she could read much better than they thought. She craned her neck, straining back over her shoulder. ‘Come on, my dear,’ the woman said. My dear; for the second time. Mother never said it, only ‘You useless lump.’ Useless lump or my dear, the meaning was the same.
Inside the big building the tiles were cold underfoot. Another woman came out, wearing a blue and white check garment. She had an elastic belt and a paper hat. ‘Oh hello, Miss Tidmarsh,’ she said. ‘And how are we today? Got another customer for us?’
She had a special way of looking at Muriel, as if she looked straight through her and around all the edges to assess her size and shape. She shifted from one foot to the other, a little selfconsciously, and twanged at her elastic belt. ‘We’re supposed to be going into mufti soon,’ she said. ‘What do you think of that?’ The woman made some reply. Muriel looked around the entrance hall, up at the ceiling. The nurse asked, ‘How about a cup of tea?’
‘That would be brilliant,’ Muriel said.
The nurse gave her a queer look. ‘Not you, dear. Patients’ tea comes at ten thirty, you’ve missed it.’
‘I’ll have coffee,’ Muriel said. ‘Jam, ham, Spam, roast beef, cornflakes and Ovaltine.’ Miss Tidmarsh laughed.
They followed the notices that said ADMISSIONS. The ward had thirty beds. This is your locker, this is your orange bedspread, this is your bedside mat, this is where you will live. ‘And then, dear, in a week or two, when Doctor has had a talk to us, we’ll be moving on.’
Muriel sat on her orange bedspread. ‘My head hurts,’ she said. The nurse took away her dress. She took away her knickers. She gave her a thin cotton gown.
‘Don’t you wear a bra?’ she said. Muriel shook her head. The nurse smiled. ‘We don’t want to droop, do we?’
‘I don’t know what we’re talking about,’ Muriel said. ‘Our head hurts.’
‘We mustn’t be cheeky. We’ll learn that soon enough, dear. Haven’t we got slippers?’ Muriel shook her head again. ‘You’ll have to get your visitors to bring you some.’
‘Will I get visitors?’
‘You’ll get your family, won’t you, dear?’
Muriel thought this over. Baby: drip, drip. Mother. She closed her eyes tiredly. Mother always said she would haunt.
‘Pay attention, dear,’ the nurse said sharply. Muriel slapped the palm of her hand against her head. ‘That won’t help,’ the nurse said. ‘I can’t give you any medication. Not till you’ve seen the doctor.’
‘When will that be?’
‘That will be on the ward round. Tomorrow.’
When Muriel was left alone, she sat on her bed and dangled her feet. She examined them, hanging there on the end of her legs, her fat red toes. She had done a lot of talking since Mother died. Before, days had gone by without speech; weeks, months. Except for rhymes. She’d not give up making those rhymes, she enjoyed them. They were all she remembered from St David’s School. Sing a song of headache, holler scream and cry, Four and twenty nurses, baked in a pie. She would not cry;