The little girl was not drinking her juice but sat with the carton in her hand staring at Sarah, who saw in those dark and most unchildlike eyes a desolation of unhappiness, a world of grief.
The mother: 'Why did you nag at me for orange juice if you didn't want it? Give it here — I'll put it in the bottle for Baby.'
She impatiently took the carton from her daughter, again reached over the bench back, fetched out the bottle, poured the orange juice in the bottle, and then, having taken a little swig herself, fed the juice to the baby.
The child gave a sob, and as if this was exactly what the mother had been waiting for, she screeched, 'Now what is it?' and in a transport of dislike she slapped the little girl on the forearm. The child sat absolutely still, watching the ugly red come up on her skin. Then she let out a single loud hopeless wail and at once clamped her lips shut — she had been unable to prevent that cry.
'If you don't behave yourself,' said the mother to the child, in a voice full of hate, 'I'll… '
The child sat rigid, silent.
The mother reached back, took out cigarettes and matches, and tried to light a cigarette over the baby's head. 'Oh shit, you take him, then,' said she, depositing the baby on the little girl's lap. 'Now, you hold him nicely, don't jump about, just sit.'
On the child's face came a trembling smile. Tears stood in her eyes. She held the happy baby and clasped him tight to her body and kissed him. The little girl had her lips on the baby's head, on the soft hair just above the ear. Her eyes were shut. As she sat there in a bliss of love, her mother stared straight ahead, gasping lungfuls of smoke in and out.
The little girl was singing, 'Darling, darling, darling, I love you, I love you my Ned, my darling Ned,' eyes shut, thin arms squeezing the baby, who was suddenly woeful and might cry. And all at once, in a single movement, the mother flicked her cigarette on the path, stamped on it, and reached for the baby. 'Don't paw him like that, stop it, stop it at once.' And she lifted the baby onto her own lap. And now the baby sat with a trembling down-turned mouth, and it was touch and go whether he would let out a wail.
'It's your fault,' said the mother in the disliking voice she used for her daughter. And she hastily bounced the baby and sang and kissed him into good humour. Then, when the baby was happy, up got mother, who wanted to put him back in the pram, but he wasn't having that, he clung to her neck and laughed.
Her mouth tight and angry, the mother said to the child, 'You can push the pram.'
She went off cuddling the baby, not looking to see if the little girl was following with the heavy pram, which she had to manoeuvre off the grass and onto the path. When she had accomplished this task, the child stood for a moment, getting her breath back.
Sarah was silently telling the child, 'Hold on, hold on. Quite soon a door will slam shut inside you because what you are feeling is unendurable. The door will stand there shut all your life: if you are lucky it will never open, and you'll not ever know about the landscape you inhabited — for how long? But child time is not adult time. You are living in an eternity of loneliness and grief, and it is truly a hell, because the point of hell is that there is no hope. You don't know that the door will slam shut, you believe that this is what life is and must be: you will always be disliked, and you will have to watch her love that little creature you love so much because you think that if you love what she loves, she will love you. But one day you'll know it doesn't matter what you do and how hard you try, it is no use. And at that moment the door will slam and you will be free.
She watched the child carefully set off, reaching up with both hands to the handle of the heavy pram, pushing it along the path after the mother. Over the woman's shoulder could be seen the baby's smiling face. The mother made no attempt to slow her pace, although the child was so far behind. At the gate she stopped and turned, and she shouted, 'Oh, do come on.' The child, trying hard, slipped and fell to her knees, and got up crying, and again pushed the pram. Then the baby was put into the pram and propped against cushions, and the three left the park as they had entered it, the mother with One hand on her side of the handle, the little girl reaching up with both hands.
Did Sarah believe that her mother, the admirable Mrs Millgreen, could ever have been like that young woman with her two little children? Certainly not; Sarah had been witnessing an extreme of unkindness. But wait — how could she, or anyone, know? The talk of old people can only be deciphered by contemporaries. A pause in the run of a reminiscence can stand for some monstrous quarrel. Half a dozen words as ordinary as 'We never got on, you know' mark implacable and decades-long hostilities. 'I'll always remember that summer' or 'We always did fancy each other' (and a laugh) remembers the most intense passion of a lifetime. An old man sighs, once, for a long season of mourning, an old woman stumbles over a word or a phrase, because she was on the verge of self-betrayal. That young woman on the bench: when she was old would there be anything left of her dislike for her little daughter? Perhaps only 'Boys are so much easier than girls.'
Much more likely, though — Sarah was remembering certain brisk and practical tones of her mother's voice — that the scene from last summer was more to the point, when the three boys had come to say goodnight to their mother in their short red dressing gowns, with their brushed fair hair, their washed faces, and then had rushed off up the stairs, but James had come back, twice, and stood at the door.
'What is it, James?'
'Nothing.'
'Then run along.'
As the boy turned to go out of the room his eyes had met Sarah's. No, it was not that bleak desolation, it was not grief, but rather… patience. Yes, it was stoicism. He was not four years old, or six years old; he was twelve. That door had slammed shut for him long ago, and he had forgotten it was there. With luck he would never know the door was there, never be forced to remember what lay behind it.
When Sarah's grandmother was dying in hospital — this was a good twenty years ago — Sarah sat with her through the afternoons and evenings of a dark autumn, sometimes with her mother, the dying woman's daughter. In the next bed was an old woman as small and light as a leaf, who called out hour after hour, 'Help, help, help,' in a soft little voice, like the call of a bird. Sometimes she called, 'Help, Mother' — the word Mother on two notes: 'Help, Mo-ther?' the second note rising. 'Help' — while she waited and listened for a reply that never came. 'Help… Mo-ther?'
Sarah's grandmother did not seem to hear. She did not comment or complain. She lay conscious, eyes open, part drugged, taking no notice of her surroundings or, much, of her daughter and granddaughter. The hours, then the days, went past, and Sarah sat on, noting with approval how stoically her grandmother died, but listening to the calls from behind the white curtains. 'Help… help, Mo-ther?'
When it was over, Sarah's mother said, 'I hope I do it as well as she did, when my time comes.'
Months have passed. Sarah is looking into her mirror, just as on the evening when we first saw her. At first glance she has not much changed, but a closer look says otherwise. She has aged by ten years. For one thing, her hair, which for so long remained like a smooth dulled metal, now has grey bands across the front. She has acquired that slow cautious look of the elderly, as if afraid of what they will see around the next corner. Sarah has changed, and so have the rooms she lives in. When her daughter telephoned to say she was bringing the children for Christmas, she saw her flat through the eyes of sunny and unproblematical California. What had seemed so difficult for years became easy. In came the painters, and soon her walls blazed white. She cleared out all the junk, and window sills stood clean and empty, and so did tables and the tops of bookshelves. She felt as if a weight had been lifted away out of her rooms, leaving her lighter and freer too. The Cezanne reproduction she did not discard, though if she had it would not have made any difference, so much was it part of her emotional history. Nor did she discard the little photograph of Julie. These did not have pride of place near her desk but were part of a wall of photographs and posters in the spare room. There her grandchildren had lived for a couple of weeks. They scribbled a moustache on the touch-me-not young Harlequin and put spectacles on the thoughtful Pierrot.