Short story

Good Samaritans

A. N. Wilson

`What about my mother?'

Clifford's question had followed the announcement that he would be spen- ding Christmas with his brother-in-law at Virginia Water.

His wife looked at him with satisfied con- tempt. It was sheer moral cowardice which made him say 'my mother'. Her mother, in the days of her flesh, had never been 'my mother'. Always Mummy, as though there

were but one maternal parent in the universe. Clifford's feeble 'my mother' pro- claimed that the older Mrs Wade was a rather unfortunate appendage, someone who still needed to be explained, a person who was certainly, in his wife's terms, nothing to boast of. If anything, quite the reverse. Had the old woman been mention- able, let alone the sort of person they could without embarrassment introduce to their friends, he would not still, after quarter of a century of marriage, be referring to 'my mother'.

'I am sure your mother would not want to come all the way to Virginia Water,' said his wife maliciously. 'You know how being in the back of the car jolts her arthritis.'

There was no point in indicating that his mother could travel in the front of the Volvo, that his wife could take the back seat. For it was a conversational battle which his wife had won before it started. Clifford resolved to capitulate.

`So you think she should spend Christmas at Rewley Court?' he volunteered. His wife, having walked round the Maginot line, was going to find the con- quered inhabitants only too anxious to co- operate.

'I do honestly,' said his wife. `It's just,' Clifford added weakly, 'that of course my mother always has spent the day with us, Christmas.' She glared at him, not because he had threatened rebellion — she knew that he

hadn't — but because of his demotic 'Christmas'. He should have said 'at Christmas'. It was faults such as these which determined that he was an income tax inspector rather than a 'tax consultant' with a brass plate of his own. `Well quite frankly, Clifford, I feel I've carried the can long enough. I didn't ask to go to Esmee' (her brother's wife), 'it was all her idea. But I've told them we are coming.'

Esmee, that morning on the telephone while Clifford was working at the Revenue, had in fact suggested that they brought Clifford's mother over to Virginia Water. His wife did not mention this.

When he said, 'They know we usually have had my mother,' she said; 'I forgot to mention it to them. I just assumed now she is frankly so very crippled with arthritis that

she would be happier ' `On her own at Rewley Court.' Clifford finished the sentence for her.

'Oh come on.' His wife downed her sweet martini and got up to refill her glass. 'You know she won't be on her own.'

'Rewley Court's depressing.'

'I don't think it is. There's lovely bright paintwork. And there wouldn't be such a waiting list to get into the bloody place if it was depressing.'

'All those poor old things staggering down the corridors on walking frames.'

'Now you're just being sentimental.'

Clifford looked at his wife, who was named Marcelle. She had brushed back, bouffed out, and he assumed dyed, hair. Her skin was olive. She had rather too large nostrils which gave to her beaky nose the look of some predatory animal. He would like to have rescued his mother from the fate which Marcelle was preparing for her. Rewley Court would be, he was convinced, uncongenial on Christmas Day. He and his mother had never been apart at Christmas. He was fifty-five now. 'We could drive over to Rewley Court for tea,' he said despondently.

`From Virginia Water? You must be barking. It's 50 miles or more. Oh, Clif- ford, be an angel and get my cigarettes for me, will you. I've only just sat down.'

Since, some years before, giving up, Clif- ford was disgusted by the stench of Marcelle's Dunhill; but he rose and fetched them from the G-plan bookcase unit. Marrying Marcelle had, in the first in- stance, been an act of cruelty to his mother. Months before the wedding, his mother had warned him that Marcelle was 'a bit sophisticated'. This was what he had liked about her. But almost every day for the last 25 years, he had hated his wife. He now hated her for many reasons, but the chief and the first reason was the pain their wed- ding had caused his mother. Of course, a separation would have hurt his mother even more. Divorces were not the sort of thing which had ever happened in his family. For some years he had dreaded Marcelle asking for one. Now, however, that they were past what he conceived as the '25-year mark', he assumed that divorce was unlikely.

`Bless you,' said his wife who, on receipt of the cigs, ignited one immediately with a slick little lighter. Her moist lipsticky mouth held the fag which danced momen- tarily on her lips as she exhaled through the enormous nostrils. 'I know we're being Good Samaritans to Esmee and Brian. It's their first Christmas on their own since David joined this frightful sect thing.'

Clifford wondered why Brian and Esmee's other children were not coming to them on Christmas Day — Gordon, who was managing director of a factory which made plastic bags for freezer food pro- ducts, or Jill, the wife of a fully qualified dentist. But he was glad they would not be there. He was more worried about how to break the news to his mother, that she must spend Christmas Day at Bewley Court. He would have to write it in a letter. He knew that his prose style was stiff and that the words might come out more unkindly than he meant. But he would be unable to say the words. 'I'll have to let my mother know,' he said.

Four days divided the posting of the let- ter and his next visit, the regular Sunday one, at Bewley Court. There had been nothing for it, after her first fall, but to put his mother into a home. In some ways it seemed ridiculous, since he and Marcelle had three spare bedrooms. The old woman could have maintained life there, even kept some independence, had one of the bedrooms been converted into a small kit- chen. The centrally-heated neo-Georgian house on its salubrious estate was, as the agent's particulars had stressed before they bought it, on all the major bus routes and within easy reach of the various amenities. Old Mrs Wade could have lived there and caused no trouble, but, understandably perhaps, Marcelle would never have stood for it.

Until they had actually made the arrange- ments and signed all the papers, Clifford had always rather despised those who put their parents into homes. His mother had, in earlier days, made many sacrifices for him. She had brought him up more or less single-handed and taught him habits, while he was at the grammar school, of thrift and hard work. She had helped to support him (herself taking menial employment) while he went to the University and trained as an accountant. After he got his job at the Revenue, she had accepted no 'charity' from him. Now that she was old, he had acquiesced in her being shut up in a municipal home. Marcelle had said it was 'quite ridiculous' to think of paying for a private place, even if they could afford it. Clifford knew that if Mummy (as he had annoyingly got into the habit of calling his mother-in-law) had lived, she would cer- tainly have gone into a private home or liv- ed at the Coppice with them. But his own mother was, he conceded feebly, a bit dif- ferent.

He winced as he thought of this and pro- gressed down the overheated corridor towards the day room. As a boy (a fact he had kept well hidden from contemporaries at the time) he had enjoyed playing with dolls. His unenterprising delight was to ar- range the teddy bear, the two rag dolls, the china doll which had belonged to his mother when she was a little girl, the glove puppets and so on in a stiff little row around the skirting board of his bedroom. In like fashion, the inmates of Bewley Court had been unimaginatively propped up in the day room, in rows forming three sides of a square. Those with weak neck muscles balanced their floppy heads against the wings of upright, urine-proof plastic-coated armchairs. Everyone's eyes had a vacant stare. Harold found, with shock, that he had to look about for a moment before he recognised his mother. She was starting to blend in. Her thick white hair which had been piled up in a bun until last week, had now been shorn like most of the other old ladies. It was a style which seemed to take its inspiration from the lunatic asylums of the Third Reich.

'You've got a smart new hair-do,' he quipped, leaning over to embrace her pink, slightly whiskery face.

`Thought I'd have it done, the others were being cropped.' She laughed and wav- ed in the direction of the giant television set which blared in the centre of the opposite wall. The screen was over-bright. The man, who had an orange face going green at the edges, was planting out dahlias of ex- uberant garishness in a garden centre. Clif- ford could hardly hear her voice. The televi- sion was so loud that he could feel the floor quivering beneath the soles of his Hush Puppies. She was waving a paperback detective story at him, but he missed her comments upon it. Unlike his mother, Clif- ford had never been much of a reader. He did not want to speak about books until he heard her reaction to his letter. He wanted it clearly established that she was not com- ing to the Coppice on Christmas Day.

On Sundays, the old people were allowed to take a member of their family to their room. Clifford shouted at her that he would like to take her for a walk down the corridor. The absence of the lower plate in Mrs Wade's face gave her a look of exag- gerated and determined melancholy.

`That poor old body over there' — she jabbed with her book once more, and ig- nored his suggestion of a walk, 'had a very slight stroke last week.'

A bleak-faced wreck of a woman in a grey cardigan groped the side of her chair, her mouth deformed and stiffly elongated. Clifford tried to tell his mother that they should not speak so loud about the other patients.

`It's all right. They're all deaf as posts.' `Mother, you got my letter?'

'It was kind of you to write. I like post in the ... I've become quite like a child.' A little laugh. 'I'm even thinking of sending up for catalogues. You know, so I can get post in ... ' Her annoying habit of not finishing a sentence had become accen- tuated since going to Bewley Court.

`I'm very sorry we shan't be together at Christmas, mother.' He blurted it out. It had to be said. They could not sit there, two grown-up people in the day room, and not mention it.

She smiled but said nothing.

'I know Marcelle would have liked you to come with us to Virginia Water.' It was foolish to have started this lie. What would happen if she called his bluff, and said that, in that case, she would come to Surrey? But she spared him.

'No, you go to — is it her brother?' 'Yes, mother.'

`The one 1 called Alec?'

They both laughed. It gave him a thrill to hear his mother repeat, 'Smart Alec, you remember.'

How could he forget, after a mere quarter of a century, the pain of his wed- ding day?

After a pause he said; 'I can probably come and see you the day after Christmas, even if I don't come Christmas itself.'

`I've never been on my own before at Christmas,' she said in a matter-of-fact tone. 'Either I had Mum and Dad, or there was your father, or there was • ..'

'Yes, mother.' She never quite got round to mentioning Marcelle by name.

While she rubbed salt in his wounds, Clifford suddenly wondered whether he had not married Marcelle because he wanted to hurt his mother. She was being quite exasperating. Half an hour later, as he crossly unlocked the Volvo in the car-park, he told himself that he was glad not to be seeing her on Christmas Day.

But of course, in the event, he was not glad. Guilt nagged and gnawed at him throughout the whole wretched day. With childish simplicity, he missed her. When he had come downstairs in the morning, Marcelle had hooted, 'You're not going to Brian's in that dreadful old suit.'

It was not an old suit. As a matter of fact, he had purchased it at Burtons only two years before. His wife, however, had meant that the lovat-coloured worsted, the fawn cardie and the tie were 'ageing'. Well, he was bloody well fifty-five. He seethed and wished, sometimes, that his wife would act her age. The red trouser suit in fact did nothing for her. Her bottom was too fat and she had overdone the make-up. He had nevertheless been sent upstairs to change. She told him to remove the suit and to wear instead a pair of what Marcelle called slacks. She had bought them for him to wear yachting last summer in Lewes. She suggested too that he put on the fisherman's top which was her Christmas present to him.

He had given her the usual scent, and her only comment had been how typical it was of him, not to have noticed that it was

months since she had used that particular brand. At least, he had protested, she could change it. He was saddled with this silly brushed-cotton garment with a large pocket in the front which made him look, she said, with his beer-belly, like a pregnant kangaroo. This was evidently how she wanted her husband to look, for she would not hear of his changing it for a sports coat.

He had begun the day, therefore, feeling a complete idiot. The drive took them ages — Virginia Water was, as it turned out, more than 50 miles away and they had had quite a set-to in Dorking about who had been responsible for taking the wrong turn- ing. He had not felt much like jollifications when they at last reached Brian's house. The 'neighbourhood cocktail party' seemed to go on for hours. With a groaningly emp- ty stomach, Clifford had asked in voce in- sufficiently sotto when they were going to have their lunch. Marcelle had hissed furiously that Brian and Esmee liked their turkey in the evening.

They were all drunk and a bit acrimonious after six hours' drinking and not much to nibble, by the time Esmee reel- ed towards the dining-area of their open- plan living-room, and the slightly over- cooked and fishy-tasting turkey was served. All for this! They had consigned his mother to an institution on Christmas Day just so that they could get plastered with a lot of Brian's neighbours (whom they had never met before) and hear a lot of vile jokes

about video nasties. By the time Brian opened that third litre-bottle of Valpolicella, and Clifford was wondering if he could stop himself being sick, old Mrs Wade was in bed.

In Rewley Court, she had hardly given a thought to her son all day. She had survived so long in the world by not allowing herself habits of introspection. But now, at last, she realised that she had not really enjoyed Christmas ever since Clifford had got mar- ried. She had never much liked Marcelle. But since Clifford asked her, year after year, to spend the day with them, it would have been graceless to refuse. She had never liked Marcelle's way of doing Christmas. Clifford was always sent to fetch her, for instance, at an hour of the morning which precluded churchgoing. Then there would be the drinking and the smoking and later, the too-rich chestnut stuffing, and Marcelle trying to be `clever' during the Queen's broadcast. It was only after a Rewley Court Christmas that Mrs Wade recognised what she had been missing.

Each Sunday now, perfectly capable of getting about, Mrs Wade went to the quite high church nearby. But since, this Christmas, there had been a special service laid on in Rewley Court, she had stayed in for that. Such a nice young curate, a Father Peter, had brought the Communion and spoken to them about the Manger and the Star. He spoke about there being no room in the Inn for the Third World countries, by whom he evidently meant the natives in Africa. It was a lovely talk. Then a Coun- cillor Someone, a woman in a tweed coat trimmed with a velvet collar, brought round little presents for them all. Mrs Wade had been given butterscotch to which she was particularly partial. Then the dinner — real- ly delicious chicken, bread sauce, sprouts, tinned potatoes and all the trimmings. The mince pie and custard was very good, and much less rich than the brandy butter Marcelle would always insist upon. Then the Queen, during whose discourse everyone lolled in decrepit silence before the gigantic set. And tea, with jellies and crackers and, apart from Mr Elthorn being rather silly, everyone enjoying themselves, in paper hats. Afterwards, with quavery gusto, they had all joined in while the matron played on the piano '0 come all ye faithful' and `My old man said follow the van'. An early supper, and then Christmas Night with the stars.

Glowing now with the happiness and suc- cess of the day, Mrs Wade lay tucked up in bed. Miss Shaw, the quite nice woman with whom she shared, slept gently at the other side of the room emitting rather comforting gurgling noises, like a baby or a sleeping rabbit. Mrs Wade, her teeth in a mug beside her, sucked contentedly a butterscotch, and gazed at a novel by Agatha Christie until, when weariness had overcome her eyelids, she was dreamlessly asleep.

A.N.Wilson 1983