Every Day is Mother’s Day
Hilary Mantel
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Previously published in paperback by Penguin Books 1986
First published by Chatto & Windus Ltd 1985
Copyright © Hilary Mantel 1985
Hilary Mantel asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 9780007354863
Version 2019-06-12
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
to the Bevington-Levitts
Two errors; one, to take everything literally; two, to take everything spiritually.
PASCAL
Do not adultery commit; Advantage rarely comes of it.
A. H. CLOUGH
Table of Contents
Excerpt from Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
When Mrs Axon found out about her daughter’s condition, she was more surprised than sorry; which did not mean that she was not very sorry indeed. Muriel, for her part, seemed pleased. She sat with her legs splayed and her arms around herself, as if reliving the event. Her face wore an expression of daft beatitude.
It was always hard to know what would please Muriel. That winter, when the old man fell on the street and broke his hip, Muriel had personally split her sides. She was in her way a formidable character. It wasn’t often she had a good laugh.
Click, click, click, said the mock-crocs. They were Mrs Sidney’s shoes. She passed without mishap along the Avenue, over that flagstone with its wickedly raised edge where Mr Tillotson had tripped last winter and sustained his fracture; they had petitioned the council. Mrs Sidney’s good legs, the legs of a woman of twenty-five, moved like scissors down the street. Her face was white and tired, her scarlet lips spoke of an effort at gaiety. She had carried the colour over the line of her thin lips, into a curvaceous bow; she had once read in a magazine that this could be done. Of what lies between the good legs and the sagging face, better not to speak; Mrs Sidney never dwelled on her torso, she had given it up. She stopped by the house called ‘The Laburnums’, by the straggling privet hedge spattered white with bird-droppings and ravaged by amateur topiary; and tears misted over her eyes. She wore the black coat with the mink trim.
Arthur had been with her when she bought the coat. It was budgeted for; the necessity had been weighed. Arthur had been embarrassed, standing among the garment rails; he had clasped his hands behind his back like Prince Philip, and with his eyes elsewhere he tried to look like a man deep in thought. She had not trailed him around the shops, she knew what she wanted. ‘A good coat,’ she said to him, ‘a good cloth coat is worth every penny you spend on it.’
She had tried on two, and then the black. The salesgirl was sixteen. She was not interested in her job. She stood with one limp arm draped over the rail, her hip jutting out, watching Mrs Sidney push the laden hangers to and fro. She did not know anything about the cut of a good cloth coat. Mrs Sidney removed her gloves, and her fingers stroked the little mink collar appreciatively. She had tried to engage Arthur’s attention, but he was not looking, and for a second she was shot through with resentment. Carelessly she tossed her old camelhair over a rail; until this morning it had been her best coat, but now it seemed shabby and inconsiderable. She unfastened the buttons carefully, slipped her arms into the silky lining. Turning to see the back in the long mirror, she smiled tentatively at the salesgirl. ‘Do you think the length…?’
The girl raised her thin shoulders in a shrug.
By now Arthur stood smiling at her indulgently, his hands still