The Peppered Moth by Margaret Drabble

Author:Margaret Drabble [Drabble, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Chrissie and Robert, who had sat with embarrassment through many such monologues, would have congratulated the person from Derby, had they ever learned of this interchange. Not many scored so well. And yet Chrissie and Robert were, in general, sorry for their mother. They recognized that it was her insecurity and her unhappiness that made her talk so much. They were old enough to know this, but not old enough to know what to do about it. They could not make things easier for Bessie. They had to watch and suffer for her and for themselves in silence. They worried about her, in their way.

Walking together along the Cobb at Lyme on a clear calm evening, they discussed their mother, as Bessie and Dora had discussed theirs. They had endured the increasingly neurotic and overorganized ordeal of holiday departure (never again, resolved Robert, never again, swore Chrissie), and now were after all quite pleased to find themselves in this beautiful curving town by the curving bay of the southern sea. Lyme was romantic. Lyme was in good taste, and had not in those days taken on the powerful British seaside odour of onion, vinegar, ketchup and fried foodstuffs. It still smelled of sand, salt, sea and fish. They liked Lyme Regis. They were young, and they were still hopeful.

‘She says she’s depressed,’ said Chrissie.

‘Depressed? What’s she got to be depressed about?’ said Robert.

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Chrissie. ‘She says it’s something called endogenous depression. It’s an illness, she says. Like mumps or measles. That’s what she says Dr Hancox says.’ Robert didn’t bother to reply. He knew it didn’t work like that.

‘But I don’t believe in it,’ continued Chrissie. ‘It’s her own fault. She never goes out, she never sees anyone. No wonder she’s depressed. She ought to make more of an effort. It’s not natural, never to see anyone.’

‘Isn’t it?’ said Robert. He was not very sociable himself, though he did not admire himself for this. He admired Chrissie’s reaction more, but found he could not replicate it. He sometimes tried, but something always seemed to stop him.

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Chrissie firmly. ‘She ought to try a bit harder. She ought to get out and see people.’

‘She doesn’t know anybody to see.’

‘She doesn’t know anybody because she never goes out.’ They had reached the end of the pier, and stood there, gazing down into the sucking, slapping water. Beneath their feet the large hewn stones of the Cobb were starred and studded with small fossil life, with shell and frond millennia old.

‘She says it’s his fault, because he won’t take her out.’

‘There’s some truth in that,’ said Robert.

‘Yes,’ said Chrissie. ‘But when he does offer, she makes such a fuss. Gets ill, or makes a scene. You know what I mean.’

He did know what she meant. Retreat, hysteria, shouting, sulking, abuse. There’d been less of that since the tablets, but it could still happen, unpredictably, at any time.

Poor Robert and Chrissie, trying to retrace the progress of the disease which was eating up their mother and punishing their father.

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