Read Online My Daughter, My Mother by Annie Murray - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Annie Murray
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expected much.
But she couldn’t concentrate on anything. It felt as if her head had been plugged into the mains, with flashes of electricity sparking through it.
‘Maybe you need to rest,’ Fred kept saying. He was doing his best to be helpful. ‘If you need to go to bed, go. There’s nothing that can’t wait, is there?’
So most afternoons she found herself up in bed again, under the blue-and-white duvet, hearing noises from the street. It was all she could cope with – shutting herself away while her mind raced.
The alarm clock on her bedside table ticked loudly. She lay on her side watching it. She liked the way it broke through the endless silence. If she stared hard enough, she thought she could see the black minute-hand moving round.
And then she would move onto her back, close her eyes and the jolting assaults of memory would return like snatches of a film playing in her head. Certain images burned intensely in her mind: Mom clinging to the door that morning, with the last food she would ever give her children; the door of the shed slamming shut; Nora Paige’s eyes widening, then blinking convulsively. It happened, Margaret had learned, when a strong emotion was brewing in her, her thick body charging up with it.
These were memories she thought she had buried forever, the years of evacuation sealed in her as in an airless tomb. And now she couldn’t stop them. It was hard to set anything in order, confused as things had been by her infant mind; and now, in her half-waking state, she was powerless even to try.
‘She’s quite an educated woman, I believe . . .’ That was Miss Peters’ voice, half-whispered to another teacher when they were in the vicarage for their lessons. There was a blackboard with sums on it. ‘Or she was once. There are books in the house.’
There were: volumes with dark-red and black covers. Nora Paige sat by the range at night, squeezed into the straight-backed armchair that was pushed into the corner in the daytime, reading by the light of the oil lamp. She did not possess a wireless to break the silence. Margaret was expected to make herself invisible.
‘You sit quiet there,’ Mrs Paige would instruct her, pointing at the settle with its hard cushions. ‘Not a word, d’you hear?’
The aching boredom of those evenings! Somewhere, within a couple of days of arriving, Margaret had lost Peggy Doll, dropping her from her pocket, never to be seen again. There was nothing whatever to do, and no Tommy to make her laugh or invent games. Margaret would sit, sometimes with Seamus beside her, who would at least let her stroke him. Other times he was moody and lashed out with claws that drew blood.
Margaret would draw her legs up and pick at her knees, or at a thread in her old grey skirt, or at the piping at the edge of the cushions. The clock ticked, round-faced on the mantel, its pendulum swinging, and she watched, half-hypnotized. Mrs Paige turned the pages of her book, cleared her throat, scratched her scalp, a finger questing delicately through the hairnet.
Earlier on in these endless evenings she always prepared food to take up to Ernest.
‘The poor man needs my company, lying alone up there all day.’ Only one plate of the thin stew would go up with her. ‘I have to feed it to him, you know,’ she would say.
As Margaret ate her own meagre ration of food, picking up the plate to lick off the last traces of gravy, she could hear Mrs Paige’s voice through the floorboards, though not what was said. She strained to hear Mr Paige’s replies, but could never make them out.
School was a pleasant dream in comparison: the warm bodies round the table at the back of the vicarage; the bustling vicar’s wife, Mrs Bodley-Fisher; the crackling fire in the grate. Had they been worried about her, she wondered now? There had been odd snatches of conversation that she overheard, their eyes fixed on her face as they talked with heads close together. But each day Miss Peters
But she couldn’t concentrate on anything. It felt as if her head had been plugged into the mains, with flashes of electricity sparking through it.
‘Maybe you need to rest,’ Fred kept saying. He was doing his best to be helpful. ‘If you need to go to bed, go. There’s nothing that can’t wait, is there?’
So most afternoons she found herself up in bed again, under the blue-and-white duvet, hearing noises from the street. It was all she could cope with – shutting herself away while her mind raced.
The alarm clock on her bedside table ticked loudly. She lay on her side watching it. She liked the way it broke through the endless silence. If she stared hard enough, she thought she could see the black minute-hand moving round.
And then she would move onto her back, close her eyes and the jolting assaults of memory would return like snatches of a film playing in her head. Certain images burned intensely in her mind: Mom clinging to the door that morning, with the last food she would ever give her children; the door of the shed slamming shut; Nora Paige’s eyes widening, then blinking convulsively. It happened, Margaret had learned, when a strong emotion was brewing in her, her thick body charging up with it.
These were memories she thought she had buried forever, the years of evacuation sealed in her as in an airless tomb. And now she couldn’t stop them. It was hard to set anything in order, confused as things had been by her infant mind; and now, in her half-waking state, she was powerless even to try.
‘She’s quite an educated woman, I believe . . .’ That was Miss Peters’ voice, half-whispered to another teacher when they were in the vicarage for their lessons. There was a blackboard with sums on it. ‘Or she was once. There are books in the house.’
There were: volumes with dark-red and black covers. Nora Paige sat by the range at night, squeezed into the straight-backed armchair that was pushed into the corner in the daytime, reading by the light of the oil lamp. She did not possess a wireless to break the silence. Margaret was expected to make herself invisible.
‘You sit quiet there,’ Mrs Paige would instruct her, pointing at the settle with its hard cushions. ‘Not a word, d’you hear?’
The aching boredom of those evenings! Somewhere, within a couple of days of arriving, Margaret had lost Peggy Doll, dropping her from her pocket, never to be seen again. There was nothing whatever to do, and no Tommy to make her laugh or invent games. Margaret would sit, sometimes with Seamus beside her, who would at least let her stroke him. Other times he was moody and lashed out with claws that drew blood.
Margaret would draw her legs up and pick at her knees, or at a thread in her old grey skirt, or at the piping at the edge of the cushions. The clock ticked, round-faced on the mantel, its pendulum swinging, and she watched, half-hypnotized. Mrs Paige turned the pages of her book, cleared her throat, scratched her scalp, a finger questing delicately through the hairnet.
Earlier on in these endless evenings she always prepared food to take up to Ernest.
‘The poor man needs my company, lying alone up there all day.’ Only one plate of the thin stew would go up with her. ‘I have to feed it to him, you know,’ she would say.
As Margaret ate her own meagre ration of food, picking up the plate to lick off the last traces of gravy, she could hear Mrs Paige’s voice through the floorboards, though not what was said. She strained to hear Mr Paige’s replies, but could never make them out.
School was a pleasant dream in comparison: the warm bodies round the table at the back of the vicarage; the bustling vicar’s wife, Mrs Bodley-Fisher; the crackling fire in the grate. Had they been worried about her, she wondered now? There had been odd snatches of conversation that she overheard, their eyes fixed on her face as they talked with heads close together. But each day Miss Peters
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