Death of a Perfect Mother Read Online Free PDF

zing coursing through her veins. Which meant, though she was largely unconscious of this herself, that she was in need of a good stand-up row. All her best rows occurred on Mondays, as all the family but herself realized—it was a day that might well have been observed by family, neighbours and circle of acquaintance as a day of lamentation, fasting, and general breast-beating.
    At breakfast Lill was in high good humour, and, quite unaware that she was working up to a row or two, she planned them. She scrambled some eggs to a leathery consistency and then found she’d forgotten the salt. She toasted the thin sliced loaf into wavy North Sea shapes and slapped them in a pile down on the kitchen table.
    â€˜Eat it while it’s warm,’ she said.
    â€˜Here, Mum,’ said Gordon, poking a spoon sceptically at the marmalade dish, ‘what’s this?’
    â€˜Mother’s special,’ replied Lill cheerily. ‘Had a lot ofjam jars with just a bit left in them, and I put ’em all together. I think I’ll patent the idea. Call it plumberry marmalade or something.’
    Gordon groaned.
    â€˜Tasty!’ said Fred, chewing meditatively.
    When Brian and Debbie had run off at the last minute to catch the bus to school, and when Gordon and Fred had cycled off in opposite directions to work (Christ, thought Lill to herself, we must be the only family in the whole bloody town without a car. Just my luck), Lill washed up and made the beds—all but Debbie’s, because a girl of that age ought to make her own—and while she did it she meditated ways of giving a lift to the day, gingering things up in her vicinity, giving life a spot of zip. So round about half past ten, when she knew she’d be having coffee, she stuffed a fag in her mouth and went in next door to see her mother.
    â€˜Do you want a cup?’ her mother asked, having that moment sat down with hers at the kitchen table.
    â€˜Just to be friendly,’ said Lill. ‘Make it milky.’ Her mother, without a word, got up and put a saucepan of milk on the gas-ring.
    About the only thing Lill had inherited from her mother had been her regularity—that was how she knew she’d be settling down to a quiet cup at half past ten. In other ways they were as different as camembert and gorgonzola. Old Mrs Casey, widow long since of a plumber in a small way, was short, fat and formidable more from her grim silence than her tongue. Wherever she went she was a Presence, steel-eyed, incorruptible, disapproving. She had her Standards, unspoken, unwritten, unanswerable, and she was openly contemptuous of anyone who wittingly or unwittingly sinned against them. She cut no figure in Todmarsh at large, but she attended Methodist Chapel morning and evening, rain or shine, of a Sunday. In fact, the image of nonconformity shepresented was of so rigid and regrettable a kind that one trendy minister had offered to bring the service to her if she would only stay home. She had stared him out of countenance, and finally said: ‘I’m not gone that soft yet.’ In all her life she had had only one failure, and made only one mistake. The failure was Lill, the mistake was consenting to come and live next door to her.
    â€˜I’ve been thinking,’ said Lill, starting straight in.
    â€˜Oh yes . . . ?’ Grimly, very grimly.
    â€˜About Debbie moving in here with you . . .’
    Mrs Casey removed the milk from the ring and poured it with rock-steady hand into the cup which had been a wedding present back in the days when a tea-service was a possession for life.
    â€˜As far as I’m concerned there’s never been any question of it,’ she said. ‘The question doesn’t arise. And don’t drop cigarette ash in your cup, for goodness sake. Milk costs the earth these days.’
    But such diversionary tactics had less than no chance of success. Why had Lill put a cigarette in