admitted to hospital. I did none of these things, but it was a struggle to know how to behave in the face of the great separation which was soon to overtake us. I sang to her, and when I felt the tears rising in my throat I hurried out of the room and prepared the milk and the childish biscuits that she liked, or at that stage pretended to like. In the end she slept more and more. Once she woke up, looked at me, and sighed. ‘Fay,’ she whispered. ‘Fay.’ ‘What is it?’ I said. But she never spoke again.
When I left her that evening she was calm and smiling, although she said nothing, merely pressed my hand and held it to her face. I thought it safe to go home. Or did I? Perhaps I could stand no more. I left the house at ten o’clock, and she must have died in the night, because when Joan Barber let herself in on the following morning there was no sign of life: the tap still dripped into the red plasticbasin, but that was all—no answer to her call, no stirring as she went up the stairs into the bedroom. She came down again and telephoned me. When I got there the first thing I saw was the abandoned biscuit with which I had tried to tempt her the previous day. Otherwise everything was in order. She had made a will some time before and had given it to me for safe-keeping. She had nothing to leave me but the house, and so it became mine. I think she still regarded it as my natural, my only home. In this she was prescient. But because it enshrined so much love, love that could never come again, I also knew that I would sell it when the time came. This I never told her.
I was surprised by the number of people who came to the funeral, for as far as I knew Mother saw nobody. Yet those of my father’s friends who had survived her turned up faithfully. My father had been a popular man, and his easy simple conviviality had been shared by men like himself, small-time, respectable, in a humble way of business. They came, in their unflattering oblong overcoats and their trilby hats, old men now, eyes watering with the cold or with reminiscence, cigarettes lit with shaky hands. They kissed me as a matter of course: was I not in their eyes still a child? And they promised me their help if I should ever need it: I had only to get in touch. Business cards and pieces of paper bearing telephone numbers were handed over. Owen became impatient, as he had been throughout the ceremony. Once it was over he got in the car and went off to Hanover Square. I went back to the house and served sherry and seed cake to the old men and their wives. Then I cleared up, and carefully locked the front door behind me. ‘Take a taxi, Fay,’ I heard Mother say. So I took a taxi and went back to Gertrude Street. There was nowhere else to go.
Owen was furious at being exposed to my humble origins, for he had managed to forget them, or to overlook them. The tap dripping in the red plastic basin, the old men at the funeral, shook him out of whatever complacency was left to him. My preoccupation with my mother’s dwindling life had been merciful in one way: it had helped me not to think about Owen’s business affairs, which I now suspected were irregular. I surmised that he was keeping part of the money due to the firm and must have been falsifying accounts. Naturally I could not prove this, nor did I ever know whether or not my suspicions were correct. I think now that something was on Charlie’s mind, and that Owen was questioned, but that he was able to give a reassuring account of himself. Owen had brought a great deal of money into the firm in the way of fees: he had a number of important clients, whose lordly manner, it was assumed, had recommended itself to him. Nothing was said, but I have an inkling that a mild word of warning was issued. Coming from Charlie it would have been deceptively mild, but Owen took notice of it. There were in addition one or two telephone calls from his uncle, Bernard Langdon, which left him red-faced and seething. I
When I left her that evening she was calm and smiling, although she said nothing, merely pressed my hand and held it to her face. I thought it safe to go home. Or did I? Perhaps I could stand no more. I left the house at ten o’clock, and she must have died in the night, because when Joan Barber let herself in on the following morning there was no sign of life: the tap still dripped into the red plasticbasin, but that was all—no answer to her call, no stirring as she went up the stairs into the bedroom. She came down again and telephoned me. When I got there the first thing I saw was the abandoned biscuit with which I had tried to tempt her the previous day. Otherwise everything was in order. She had made a will some time before and had given it to me for safe-keeping. She had nothing to leave me but the house, and so it became mine. I think she still regarded it as my natural, my only home. In this she was prescient. But because it enshrined so much love, love that could never come again, I also knew that I would sell it when the time came. This I never told her.
I was surprised by the number of people who came to the funeral, for as far as I knew Mother saw nobody. Yet those of my father’s friends who had survived her turned up faithfully. My father had been a popular man, and his easy simple conviviality had been shared by men like himself, small-time, respectable, in a humble way of business. They came, in their unflattering oblong overcoats and their trilby hats, old men now, eyes watering with the cold or with reminiscence, cigarettes lit with shaky hands. They kissed me as a matter of course: was I not in their eyes still a child? And they promised me their help if I should ever need it: I had only to get in touch. Business cards and pieces of paper bearing telephone numbers were handed over. Owen became impatient, as he had been throughout the ceremony. Once it was over he got in the car and went off to Hanover Square. I went back to the house and served sherry and seed cake to the old men and their wives. Then I cleared up, and carefully locked the front door behind me. ‘Take a taxi, Fay,’ I heard Mother say. So I took a taxi and went back to Gertrude Street. There was nowhere else to go.
Owen was furious at being exposed to my humble origins, for he had managed to forget them, or to overlook them. The tap dripping in the red plastic basin, the old men at the funeral, shook him out of whatever complacency was left to him. My preoccupation with my mother’s dwindling life had been merciful in one way: it had helped me not to think about Owen’s business affairs, which I now suspected were irregular. I surmised that he was keeping part of the money due to the firm and must have been falsifying accounts. Naturally I could not prove this, nor did I ever know whether or not my suspicions were correct. I think now that something was on Charlie’s mind, and that Owen was questioned, but that he was able to give a reassuring account of himself. Owen had brought a great deal of money into the firm in the way of fees: he had a number of important clients, whose lordly manner, it was assumed, had recommended itself to him. Nothing was said, but I have an inkling that a mild word of warning was issued. Coming from Charlie it would have been deceptively mild, but Owen took notice of it. There were in addition one or two telephone calls from his uncle, Bernard Langdon, which left him red-faced and seething. I
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