Department of Social Services
Wilberforce House
1st May, 1974
Dear Mr Byrne,
You will be pleased to know that we have persuaded Tarleton’s Hardware not to press shoplifting charges against Miss Muriel Axon, regarding the removal of a tin-opener which occurred when a small party of clients was taken on a shopping expedition last week.
Fortunately Mr Tarleton was most reasonable when the situation was explained to him. However we cannot count on meeting this forbearance from shopkeepers on other occasions. I should therefore be obliged if you would request your staff to exercise great vigilance when taking clients out of the Day Centre grounds. This type of incident, if publicised, can have a very unfortunate effect on public relations between the department and the public.
The caseworker involved here tells me it would be unwise to let Miss Axon’s mother know of this incident, as she appears to be a woman of exceedingly old-fashioned moral values and her already extremely negative attitude to Miss Axon is compounding our difficulties in this case.
I should also be obliged if you would not mention this to the nursing or other care staff.
Sincerely,
SUZANNE CLEGG
Principal Social Worker
Dear Sister Janet,
This is just to tell you that Muriel got let off the bit of thieving she did when Mpoe took them out the other week to have their autonomy. I know because I heard M. S. Byrne MA bawling Mpoe out for not keeping her eyes open when they came out of the Chocolate Kabin, I think he’s had a rocket from Clegg. What the devil do you think she wanted a tin-opener for? Between you and me I wouldn’t mind if we could lose Muriel when we get demolished.
Love,
NORAH
And Thursday.
‘This day last week some beast was murdered in the kitchen,’ Evelyn said. Oh, can they die, Muriel asks. Evelyn tries, without much hope, once more to explain to Muriel. There is more than one set of persecutors. There are the tenants with their constant jibes, their petty destructiveness; it was not (she pats her daughter’s arm) a human creature. It is possible to see them, quite possible, but they are very quick. You must learn to look for them out of the corner of your eyes. If people did learn to look out of the corners of their eyes, they would see a great deal that at present they miss; and most of it would be to their disadvantage.
But the other inhabitants, their effect is more—she presses her hand to her ribcage. In the soul, she wants to say, but she wonders if Muriel has a soul; if she had, and they took it away. I fear…her seamed face works a little in distress at her thoughts. She makes a gesture like someone erasing the writing on a blackboard; after which, the board itself remains.
She looks different, Muriel notices, more harassed, more starting and looking in corners. Since last Friday’s discoveries.
She is fumbling in her purse now. She lays out certain coins on the kitchen table.
‘For your tea and biscuits,’ she says.
Muriel lets them lie for a time. She practises fixing her eyes on Evelyn but looking straight through her to the wood of the cupboard at her back. She practises wiping all thoughts out of her mind. At the same time she must watch Evelyn, to see that she is still mumbling over her own concerns, not looking up with the comprehension she dreads. Finally, when Muriel can bear the suspense no longer, she snatches up the coins and holds them in her hands. Evelyn lays out more on the table. ‘For the milk-money. Tomorrow.’ Evelyn shuffles out of the kitchen, but in a moment she is back. ‘My envelopes,’ she says, her voice querulous. ‘My white envelopes for putting in the milkbottles. They have torn them all.’ She opens the kitchen drawer where she keeps her ration books and ends of string, her paper bags and cotton reels and farthings.
‘Lock and key,’ she says. ‘I shall have to buy more and keep them under lock and key.’
She tears the corner of a paper bag and puts the money into it. She folds the remainder of the bag and puts it back in the drawer. Once again tomorrow he will take the money and go away, without having to knock at the door; when the price goes up he will put a note through the letterbox. They have teased her so often with their rappings that she tries not to go to the door for any unnecessary reason; tries not to set the precedent of being in a certain place at a certain time, in case they set traps. Suddenly vindictive, she turns to Muriel: ‘I think of stopping you going to these Handicapped Classes. What good does it do? I think of stopping you.’ In a monotone, Muriel begins to repeat her words. ‘Stop it, stop it,’ Evelyn screams at her. There is terror in the girl’s face. Evelyn waddles from the room.
And once more: the match rasps against the box, the flame wavers up; Muriel watches her flesh shrinking away from the heat, and feels pain. She allows the flame to play over her wrist until it burns out in her fingers. Feels, feels. Taking the scissors, uses the point to draw blood. Again, feels.
‘If you’re going, if you’re going at all, it’s time you got ready. Are you listening to me?’
Muriel sits with her arms clamped down to her sides, willing her mother to turn. The blisters are forming now on her raw skin, the blood has dried. Evelyn shows no signs of recent pain.
‘Here.’ Evelyn goes to the chest of drawers and impatiently wrenches one open, tossing a cardigan and a pair of thick woollen stockings on to the bed. Her water-eyes darting, Muriel sees that Evelyn’s forearms are unmarked. So however it came about that her thoughts were read again (as good as read), even if half an hour ago Evelyn was thinking in her brain, she has not been in all parts of her today. Still, unless…unless the marks will show up later. Evelyn turns, and sees only her daughter’s shuttered face with its habitually blank gaze. She begins again to grumble about the trouble it gives her, getting Muriel ready for the class and setting her going. Only the thought of the Welfare people coming to the house stops her from keeping Muriel at home. ‘What do you want to go there for anyway? Going on a bus with a lot of other people with things wrong with them, cripples and people not right in the head. One day they’ll put them on that bus and take them and gas them, and then you’ll wish you’d stayed at home with your mother.’ She knows Muriel is not listening to her. She is looking sceptically at the clothes on the bed. She goes to her drawers and hunts through for the pink fluffy cardigan.
‘Grey with dirt,’ Evelyn says contemptuously. ‘If you won’t give it me to wash I won’t let you wear it again after this week. They will suppose I don’t see to your cleanliness.’
She gapes. Her jaw unhinges and her eyes grow round. Muriel is not in any doubt now. Evelyn has not been in her body today, not even very much in her brain. She is completely surprised, Muriel thinks. To be helpful, always to be helpful, she holds up her arms for Evelyn’s inspection. A low moan comes from Evelyn.
‘They have been torturing you,’ she says. ‘They have been here in your room, torturing you.’ Moaning again, she washes her arthritic hands together. Could you not cry out? You have gagged me, Muriel thinks. Up the stairs you would have come, rushing to take my pain for yourself. With what? Sharp blades and fire, Muriel says, in her casually dead voice. Now Evelyn is smashing her way out of the room and along the landing, quite heedless of the usual mockery as she passes the door of the spare room, and Muriel can hear her retching behind the closed bathroom door. Putting her hand to her belly,