‘Crawl
in the direction of the door, mum. Can you do that?’
Jim
straightens up from where he’s been shouting through the letterbox.
‘I’m
not sure she can do all that much when she gets there. I’ll have another look
round the back and see if I can get in there.’
Jim’s
mum Angela has fallen over in the hallway. We can just make her out, sitting on
the carpet by the phone table. She doesn’t sound too bad, no pain, a little
confused perhaps, but unable to get up.
‘She’s
obsessed with security,’ says Kate, Jim’s wife. ‘We’ve got a spare key, but it’s
no good when she puts the latch down. And she’s pretty good at locking all the
windows at night. I don’t know. We’ve talked about this before, but I suppose
you get set in your ways.’
I
foot the door to see how much give there is. I should be able to break in
pretty easily, but we’ve got time to find a subtler means.
‘We
thought she’d had a stroke. When she phoned us, her speech was all slurred and
she wasn’t making much sense.’
Suddenly
a light goes on in the hall. A blurred shape behind the door glass, a rattling
of locks.
Jim
throws the door open.
‘I
came through the window’ he says.
* * *
Angela
is sitting on a chair in the kitchen, a blood pressure cuff on her arm.
‘It’s
been a stressful time for mum lately,’ says Jim.
‘I’m
all right,’ she says. ‘It’s everyone else. Poor Jimmy. He’s only just getting
over the cancer. He had some of his you know what, his bowels removed and he had to go in a bag. But they reversed the thing
the other day, so thank god he’s getting back to normal. But it was a tough
time for him and Kate, that and her losing her job, when it was someone else
who made the mistake and pinned it all on her. So they’ve got all those money
worries, you know. And then there’s Kevin, my next boy. He married this girl,
pretty but cold, you know. Never saw the funny side. I knew it wouldn’t last
but you can’t say anything, not when you’re a mother. And then what happens?
Fifteen months later, she turns round to him and she says “I don’t want to be
married anymore”. Like it’s something you can just shrug off like that, like a
coat. So now he’s down in the dumps.
Then there’s Gillian, my daughter. She’s been trying for a baby since how long,
and now they’re going to have some IMF and grow one in a tube. I mean, if it
works then fine, but however much is that
costing? I was lucky in that department, it was like shelling peas, but you
just have to make the best of it. And then my washing machine packs up. There.
How’s my blood pressure?’
‘Better
than mine,’ says Jim.
6 comments:
Ooh, you don't want to get your baby from the IMF. You'll end up owing them another baby every three years and your whole reproductive economy will belong to them in no time.
You could try a Communist revolution and nationalise your child, I suppose.
Definitely. I suppose you could always try the SNCF. But then you might find yourself railroaded into having twins.
No wonder Jim's blood pressure is up through the roof.
Did Angela draw breath at all through her list of other people's woes?
Hardly. She sat on the chair in the kitchen and suddenly held forth, without any encouragement (in fact, with plenty of discouragement, looks-wise, esp. from Jim).
"...and then my washing machine..." That, listed with all of the other very serious family troubles, seems almost absurd... but it really is the littlest straw that breaks the camel's back.
At least she didn't mention the washing machine first!
I agree about that whole 'straw' thing. I think it explains a lot of otherwise completely bizarre losses of temper or sudden rages... :/
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