Hidden Lives by Margaret Forster

Author:Margaret Forster
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141957746
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

IX

Towards the end of 1948 ‘or else’ took on a more sinister meaning. My mother was going into hospital. The announcement was made in doom-laden tones – ‘Your mam has to go into the City General’ – by my father. I didn’t ask him why. I didn’t want to give him what I felt was the satisfaction of realizing how afraid I was, that for once I wasn’t going to say pertly, ‘Couldn’t care less.’ I asked her, later. The answer was, ‘For an operation.’ What was an operation? My mother seemed so evasive, almost shifty, that I couldn’t embarrass her by asking more questions. An operation. In the City General. People died in hospitals sometimes. If my mother died, what would I do? A mother was essential to life, or at least my mother to my life. It wasn’t just self-interest which made the thought of my mother possibly dying so terrifying, it was because I loved her then so passionately. My poor mother, all that caring for other people and now in return an operation.

Yet on the Sunday before the Monday she was to go into hospital I was particularly difficult and objectionable. On Sundays we often had rice pudding, my father’s only taste in puddings (except for ice-cream). I hated it. On that Sunday we had it, all glutinous in its oblong enamel dish, the edges of the white mess slightly burned, just as my father liked it. My mother knew she couldn’t miss me out entirely, in spite of my loathing of this pudding, because my father would insist, for obscure reasons of his own, mostly to do with ‘taming’ me, that I had to eat some. She gave me a very small portion but even so my stomach heaved at the sight of the slippy-sloppy contents of my bowl (such a pity I’d never heard of ‘Whatever’s the matter with Mary Jane?/It’s lovely rice pudding for dinner again’). My father ate his with enormous noisy relish and still I hadn’t touched my spoonful. The usual battle commenced. He glared at me and ordered me to eat up. I glared at the rice pudding and stirred it round and round. He ordered me to stop messing about. I closed my eyes. My mother said, ‘Please, Arthur, she doesn’t like it.’ ‘She’ll like what’s put in front of her,’ my father said. ‘Wasting good food. She’s spoiled.’ ‘Please, Margaret,’ my mother pleaded, ‘just one spoonful.’ I shook my head. We all sat there half an hour, an hour, long enough for the rice pudding to be quite cold and even more nauseating. Finally, my father lost his temper and yelled, ‘You’re making your mam ill, you are! And it’s her operation tomorrow. You’d better eat that damned pudding, or else! You’d better hope she comes back!’

Rice pudding – operation – not coming back. The impact of this curious logic was tremendous. It made perfect sense. I ran out of the house, heart thudding, my mother’s death owing to my failure to consume rice pudding already a fact.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.