purse in the fruit bowl. She took the stated dose and apparently felt better and calmer. My sister said we shouldn’t make anything (too positive) of this calmness because people who take pills often act out the effects they are expecting to feel and in the case of these particular pills our mother was certainly expecting to feel calmer.
‘So, it could all be an act?’ I said.
‘Sort of,’ said my sister. And added, ‘It’s early days.’
Overall, she didn’t seem that much better to me, just sleepy, like a darted bear that can no longer object or maul. She occasionally got the giggles if anyone said ‘cheeks’ or ‘crumpet’ but there’d always be a short delay and she’d soon forget what it was that set her off, by which time we’d be laughing at her laughingand she’d say, ‘What are we laughing at?’ and we’d all stop. It was nice to be laughing, though.
Our mother continued to write the play, but less so and only after she’d read to us from
The Hobbit
, which seemed to go on for years, and if she’d reached the necessary level of inebriation, which was usually around 8.30 p.m. The necessary level lasted only a short while, then she’d be too drunk and simply listen to music, though very quietly. Rachmaninov, who resembled her father-in-law as a young man with his nice mouth and dark eyes, or Bob Dylan, who looked like he might be from
The Hobbit
.
With our mother in this reduced and carefree state and without Mrs Lunt’s daily toilings – mopping floors, heaving great baskets about the place and replenishing the Dairylea – our new home soon became horribly untidy and chaotic. We left the shutters at the front of the house half closed – we didn’t want anyone seeing in too clearly.
Instead of ignoring the situation like any normal children, my sister and I got involved and gleaned from a tattered booklet how to use the washing machine – we felt it imperative as things were piling up and we were re-wearing dirty clothes out of the Ali Baba. But the booklet was from a Hoovermatic de-luxe twin-tub and our machine wasn’t a Hoovermatic de-luxe or a twin-tub, so it was partly guesswork. We found a basic cycle that whirled everything around in warm water for a few hours and stuck to that one.
We had mishaps – a few catastrophic. Twice the door was left open, once when a corner of a towel was trapped and once when it was just not closed, and the boot room flooded. Those times of flood were the worst times because so many things got wet and spoiled, including a runner in the hall that had been woven by twenty-one girls for twenty-one days and had cost twenty-one rials – each girl earning one precious coin. We flung it overthe line for a few days. It dried out OK but it went and stayed stiff and smelled like a wet dog for ever after. We felt guilty about the twenty-one girls, their hard work ruined.
Worse by far, though, was the second flood and the resulting ruination of the balsa-wood boxes that our mother’s father had brought for her from India. Especially as he had died just a short while before the second flood and she hadn’t even said goodbye. Mind you, she’d never really said hello either as he’d been at war when she was born. And when my sister asked if he had died peacefully our mother replied, ‘Yes, he ceased upon the midnight with no pain.’ Which meant he had been put to sleep by a doctor as if he were a poorly pet because it was the kindest thing, and came from Keats.
Anyway, the warm soapy water from the second flood washed away the beautiful hand-painted elephants, ladies, birds and so forth from the Indian boxes. And caused the sides to buckle and swell and when we tried to rescue them the staples popped off and they collapsed into a smudgy heap.
And we did an awful thing. We put the spoiled boxes into rubble bags and put them out for the bin-men and never said a word to our mother about what had happened. We thought she’d never notice. We knew it unlikely
‘So, it could all be an act?’ I said.
‘Sort of,’ said my sister. And added, ‘It’s early days.’
Overall, she didn’t seem that much better to me, just sleepy, like a darted bear that can no longer object or maul. She occasionally got the giggles if anyone said ‘cheeks’ or ‘crumpet’ but there’d always be a short delay and she’d soon forget what it was that set her off, by which time we’d be laughing at her laughingand she’d say, ‘What are we laughing at?’ and we’d all stop. It was nice to be laughing, though.
Our mother continued to write the play, but less so and only after she’d read to us from
The Hobbit
, which seemed to go on for years, and if she’d reached the necessary level of inebriation, which was usually around 8.30 p.m. The necessary level lasted only a short while, then she’d be too drunk and simply listen to music, though very quietly. Rachmaninov, who resembled her father-in-law as a young man with his nice mouth and dark eyes, or Bob Dylan, who looked like he might be from
The Hobbit
.
With our mother in this reduced and carefree state and without Mrs Lunt’s daily toilings – mopping floors, heaving great baskets about the place and replenishing the Dairylea – our new home soon became horribly untidy and chaotic. We left the shutters at the front of the house half closed – we didn’t want anyone seeing in too clearly.
Instead of ignoring the situation like any normal children, my sister and I got involved and gleaned from a tattered booklet how to use the washing machine – we felt it imperative as things were piling up and we were re-wearing dirty clothes out of the Ali Baba. But the booklet was from a Hoovermatic de-luxe twin-tub and our machine wasn’t a Hoovermatic de-luxe or a twin-tub, so it was partly guesswork. We found a basic cycle that whirled everything around in warm water for a few hours and stuck to that one.
We had mishaps – a few catastrophic. Twice the door was left open, once when a corner of a towel was trapped and once when it was just not closed, and the boot room flooded. Those times of flood were the worst times because so many things got wet and spoiled, including a runner in the hall that had been woven by twenty-one girls for twenty-one days and had cost twenty-one rials – each girl earning one precious coin. We flung it overthe line for a few days. It dried out OK but it went and stayed stiff and smelled like a wet dog for ever after. We felt guilty about the twenty-one girls, their hard work ruined.
Worse by far, though, was the second flood and the resulting ruination of the balsa-wood boxes that our mother’s father had brought for her from India. Especially as he had died just a short while before the second flood and she hadn’t even said goodbye. Mind you, she’d never really said hello either as he’d been at war when she was born. And when my sister asked if he had died peacefully our mother replied, ‘Yes, he ceased upon the midnight with no pain.’ Which meant he had been put to sleep by a doctor as if he were a poorly pet because it was the kindest thing, and came from Keats.
Anyway, the warm soapy water from the second flood washed away the beautiful hand-painted elephants, ladies, birds and so forth from the Indian boxes. And caused the sides to buckle and swell and when we tried to rescue them the staples popped off and they collapsed into a smudgy heap.
And we did an awful thing. We put the spoiled boxes into rubble bags and put them out for the bin-men and never said a word to our mother about what had happened. We thought she’d never notice. We knew it unlikely
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