And Thursday.
‘This day last week some beast was murdered in the kitchen,’ Evelyn said. Oh, can they die, Muriel asks. Evelyn tries, without much hope, once more to explain to Muriel. There is more than one set of persecutors. There are the tenants with their constant jibes, their petty destructiveness; it was not (she pats her daughter’s arm) a human creature. It is possible to see them, quite possible, but they are very quick. You must learn to look for them out of the corner of your eyes. If people did learn to look out of the corners of their eyes, they would see a great deal that at present they miss; and most of it would be to their disadvantage.
But the other inhabitants, their effect is more—she presses her hand to her ribcage. In the soul, she wants to say, but she wonders if Muriel has a soul; if she had, and they took it away. I fear…her seamed face works a little in distress at her thoughts. She makes a gesture like someone erasing the writing on a blackboard; after which, the board itself remains.
She looks different, Muriel notices, more harassed, more starting and looking in corners. Since last Friday’s discoveries.
She is fumbling in her purse now. She lays out certain coins on the kitchen table.
‘For your tea and biscuits,’ she says.
Muriel lets them lie for a time. She practises fixing her eyes on Evelyn but looking straight through her to the wood of the cupboard at her back. She practises wiping all thoughts out of her mind. At the same time she must watch Evelyn, to see that she is still mumbling over her own concerns, not looking up with the comprehension she dreads. Finally, when Muriel can bear the suspense no longer, she snatches up the coins and holds them in her hands. Evelyn lays out more on the table. ‘For the milk-money. Tomorrow.’ Evelyn shuffles out of the kitchen, but in a moment she is back. ‘My envelopes,’ she says, her voice querulous. ‘My white envelopes for putting in the milkbottles. They have torn them all.’ She opens the kitchen drawer where she keeps her ration books and ends of string, her paper bags and cotton reels and farthings.
‘Lock and key,’ she says. ‘I shall have to buy more and keep them under lock and key.’
She tears the corner of a paper bag and puts the money into it. She folds the remainder of the bag and puts it back in the drawer. Once again tomorrow he will take the money and go away, without having to knock at the door; when the price goes up he will put a note through the letterbox. They have teased her so often with their rappings that she tries not to go to the door for any unnecessary reason; tries not to set the precedent of being in a certain place at a certain time, in case they set traps. Suddenly vindictive, she turns to Muriel: ‘I think of stopping you going to these Handicapped Classes. What good does it do? I think of stopping you.’ In a monotone, Muriel begins to repeat her words. ‘Stop it, stop it,’ Evelyn screams at her. There is terror in the girl’s face. Evelyn waddles from the room.
And once more: the match rasps against the box, the flame wavers up; Muriel watches her flesh shrinking away from the heat, and feels pain. She allows the flame to play over her wrist until it burns out in her fingers. Feels, feels. Taking the scissors, uses the point to draw blood. Again, feels.
‘If you’re going, if you’re going at all, it’s time you got ready. Are you listening to me?’
Muriel sits with her arms clamped down to her sides, willing her mother to turn. The blisters are forming now on her raw skin, the blood has dried. Evelyn shows no signs of recent pain.
‘Here.’ Evelyn goes to the chest of drawers and impatiently wrenches one open, tossing a cardigan and a pair of thick woollen stockings on to the bed. Her water-eyes darting, Muriel sees that Evelyn’s forearms are unmarked. So however it came about that her thoughts were read again (as good as read), even if half an hour ago Evelyn was thinking in her brain, she has not been in all parts of her today. Still, unless…unless the marks will show up later. Evelyn turns, and sees only her daughter’s shuttered face with its habitually blank gaze. She begins again to grumble about the trouble it gives her, getting Muriel ready for the class and setting her going. Only the thought of the Welfare people coming to the house stops her from keeping Muriel at home. ‘What do you want to go there for anyway? Going on a bus with a lot of other people with things wrong with them, cripples and people not right in the head. One day they’ll put them on that bus and take them and gas them, and then you’ll wish you’d stayed at home with your mother.’ She knows Muriel is not listening to her. She is looking sceptically at the clothes on the bed. She goes to her drawers and hunts through for the pink fluffy cardigan.
‘Grey with dirt,’ Evelyn says contemptuously. ‘If you won’t give it me to wash I won’t let you wear it again after this week. They will suppose I don’t see to your cleanliness.’
She gapes. Her jaw unhinges and her eyes grow round. Muriel is not in any doubt now. Evelyn has not been in her body today, not even very much in her brain. She is completely surprised, Muriel thinks. To be helpful, always to be helpful, she holds up her arms for Evelyn’s inspection. A low moan comes from Evelyn.
‘They have been torturing you,’ she says. ‘They have been here in your room, torturing you.’ Moaning again, she washes her arthritic hands together. Could you not cry out? You have gagged me, Muriel thinks. Up the stairs you would have come, rushing to take my pain for yourself. With what? Sharp blades and fire, Muriel says, in her casually dead voice. Now Evelyn is smashing her way out of the room and along the landing, quite heedless of the usual mockery as she passes the door of the spare room, and Muriel can hear her retching behind the closed bathroom door. Putting her hand to her belly, Muriel feels a little wash of the sickness to come.
Now Lauderdale Road, homecoming. Screened by the high bushes, Muriel takes out her coins to count them. Some of them have gone. Spent, she thinks dully, expended. What are these heads, she wonders, whose are these heads upon them? She slips a hand in her pocket and takes out the little looking-glass that she picked up from where it was lying on a counter in a shop. She presses the sides of her skull, to keep in her memory the places she has seen.
Evelyn drives questions into her like hooks. Did they see, did they remark upon your arms, what people were there, were there baskets made at that place, was there singing of songs, of what type and number, kind and shape, were the biscuits you ate? Of the tea, was it pale or brown, is there sugar in that tea, do they give you the sugar as you are accustomed, in lumps or spoons from basins, and do they place it there for you or do you yourself take what you suppose you need? Of the singing: is there piano or other instrument to accompany it? She knows nothing, Muriel thinks with contempt. She makes her face frozen up.
‘Oh, you are stonewalling again,’ Evelyn says furiously. That night when she enters her room she will find it almost festal, the pieces of the torn envelopes littering the carpet and sibilating in the draughts, like confetti.
Department of Social Services
Wilberforce House
3rd May 1974
Dear Mrs Axon,
This is to advise you that the Daycare Sessions attended by Miss Axon will be temporarily suspended for a short period only, due to the demolition of the premises in Calderwell Road, from the Thursday after next. However our sessions are to be resumed at a much better equipped centre at The Hollies, Vernon Road, and you will be advised presently of the new arrangements for transport and etc. If you have any enquiries please contact Miss J. Smith at the address above or telephone.
Yours sincerely,
M.
