The Lives of Women Read Online Free PDF

survived that awful night – those touch-and-go hours, when she could have no idea if her only child would live or die and, if she did live, if she’d be a vegetable for the rest of her days – she would never know, were it not for Martha Shillman keeping her company as she’d sat, worried out of her mind, by the telephone.
    It’s her first evening home. Elaine lies on the sofa. Her mother blows grey chiffons of smoke into the sitting room and, giddy with hunger, vodka and too many fags, tells her all this.
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    She is on her way up to bed when her father’s car pulls into the driveway, smearing the walls and floor of the hall with its grainy white light. Her mother is in the kitchen organising Elaine’s pills and filling water into a hospital-style carafe, bought specially for the occasion.
    The front door swings opens and there he is suddenly, a dark figure in a dark doorway.
    â€˜Oh!’ he says when he sees her.
    He stares at her for a second, turns to close the door and comes back. ‘They discharged you, then. And when…?’
    â€˜This afternoon.’
    â€˜I see and how did…?’
    â€˜Mrs Shillman.’
    â€˜Ahh. And how are you feeling…? Shouldn’t you…?’
    â€˜I’m just going up now.’
    She looks for his binoculars, his donkey-brown derby hat, the coat he usually wears to the races. But he carries only the tools of his trade: a stack of ribboned papers under his arm, wig dangling from the tip of his fingers, barrister’s cloth bag in the other hand. In fact, he looks as he always does when he arrives home after working on a late consultation or after spending the day in a courthouse on the country circuit.
    He takes a step forward. For a moment she thinks he might be going to embrace her. But then her mother comes bustling out of the kitchen and, placing one hand on Elaine’s back, turns her towards the stairs. Her father steps back.
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    In the bedroom, her mother unpacks the bag she earlier packed, and tells her more of the neighbourhood gossip. A father and son have just moved into the house with no number on its door. The son long and streaky, the father’s face a sullen sight whenever it drives by. No sign of a mother.
    The Osborne house has been let at last, new people expected any day. That awful Gerry Caudwell got drunk and vomited into the Slaters’ hedge and his father just been given another promotion in the police force – pity he couldn’t police his own children while he was at it. June Caudwell just dropped out of her secretarialcourse and gone off to work as an au pair – in Brussels of all places! You wouldn’t mind so much if it was Paris. Oh and Agatha’s mother has bagged a part in a London play – there was a very good piece in the paper about her. The photo didn’t do her any favours, though – made her look blurred instead of beautiful.
    Elaine takes a pill from her mother’s fingers and pushes it between her lips, then she sucks down on the side of the plastic tumbler her mother’s hand is holding to her mouth. She gets under the covers. Her eyeballs feel swollen; her lids thick and dry as blotting paper.
    Her mother potters about the room, putting things out on the dressing table and chipping at drawers, closing and opening the wardrobe door.
    There is a question Elaine would like to ask her. She tries to arrange the question in her mind, to get the words to line up and come out of her mouth, one by one and making sense.
    Her mother says, ‘What dear? You’re mumbling now. I can’t understand what you’re saying. I didn’t tell what—? I didn’t tell
who
?’
    Elaine closes her eyes and sees her father’s tired face suspended in the doorway of the hall. She sees him as one of those Roman masks the Hanleys have attached to their back wall. A mask cast in grey plaster – the shape of an ‘oh’ on its lips.