Have the Men Had Enough? Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Margaret Forster

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Hannah

  Jenny

  Hannah

  Jenny

  Hannah

  Jenny

  Hannah

  Jenny

  Hannah

  Jenny

  Hannah

  Jenny

  Hannah

  Jenny

  Hannah

  Jenny

  Hannah

  Copyright

  About the Book

  What do men run away from? Not war, not physical hardship, but the day-to-day emotional demands of impossible domestic situations. That’s women’s work. This is a story of female courage, where black comedy turns to disturbing pathos revolving around the rights of an indomitable woman.

  About the Author

  Margaret Forster is the author of many successful novels, including Lady’s Maid, Mother Can You Hear Me?, The Memory Box, bestselling memoirs Hidden Lives and Precious Lives and most recently, Over, and several acclaimed biographies, including Good Wives.

  ALSO BY MARGARET FORSTER

  Fiction

  Dame’s Delight

  Georgy Girl

  The Bogeyman

  The Travels of Maudie Tipstaff

  The Park

  Miss Owen-Owen is At Home

  Fenella Phizackerley

  Mr Bone’s Retreat

  The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

  The Bride of Lowther Fell

  Marital Rites

  Private Papers

  Mother Can You Hear Me?

  Lady’s Maid

  The Battle for Christabel

  Mothers’ Boys

  Shadow Baby

  The Memory Box

  Diary of an Ordinary Woman

  Non-Fiction

  The Rash Adventurer: The Rise and Fall of Charles Edward Stuart

  William Makepeace Thackeray: Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman

  Significant Sisters: The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1838–1939 Elizabeth Barrett Browning Daphne du Maurier Hidden Lives

  Rich Deserts & Captain’s Thin: A Family & Their Times 1831–1931 Precious Lives

  Good Wives: Mary, Fanny, Jennie & Me 1845–2001

  Poetry

  Selected Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Editor)

  for

  Annabelle and Marion

  whose mother gave me this title

  and a great deal besides

  Have The Men Had Enough?

  Margaret Forster

  Hannah

  Have the men had enough?

  Never mind the men.

  Which men?

  Hurry up, the potatoes will be cold.

  I’d love a potato.

  Then take one, Grandma.

  Have the men had enough?

  Always the same. Every week, every Sunday. All of us crowded round the table, Grandma wedged in between Bridget and Paula, Bridget of course laughing at everything Grandma says and Paula not even smiling, and moving away, ever so slightly, when Grandma plonks a hand flat in the gravy as she searches for her fork.

  Have the men had enough?

  Yes, thank you, Mother.

  Who’s Mother?

  You are, go on, Mother, help yourself.

  Hold the plate steady.

  Steady the Buffs.

  Go on, Grandma.

  Have the men had enough?

  Always the same. Dad desperate to fill his face, but patient, good-humoured, coaxing Grandma along and Adrian impatient, resenting the ritual when he’s just in from football and starving and not disposed to care about Grandma’s feelings, as dear Bridget well knows so she drags it out and encourages Grandma to peer round the table and fuss on until eventually Mum calls a halt and piles her plate and then it starts, the next little song, the next refrain:

  Pass the salt.

  Grandma, everything’s covered in salt.

  It’s salty enough.

  Salt’s bad for you.

  It hardens the arteries.

  Hers have been silted up for years.

  Adrian!

  Pass the salt.

  Who does it irritate more? Hard to say. Mum long ago stopped seeing this passion for salt as an insult to her cooking, in fact I think it gives her a kind of malicious pleasure to watch Grandma totally ruin the food, watch her covering the delicate slices of delicious herb-scattered chicken, the crisp roasted potatoes, the bright green leeks (Grandma loves leeks but not the way Mum does them, barely tossed in lemon and butter, she likes the hell boiled out of them), covering all of it heavily with salt.

  Pass the salt.

  It’s in front of you.

  Stick it in her hand.

  Stick it in her mouth.

  Adrian!

  It’ll ruin her taste-buds.

  She hasn’t got any.

  Pass the salt.

  Finally, when the salt has fallen like scurf, Grandma is satisfied. She eats, with her hands, Paula concentrating hard on her own plate, Bridget cooing and praising and expertly pushing the potatoes out of the gravy, and we all hurry to eat before the inevitable, before Grandma says the chicken is tough, which of course it isn’t but who can bother saying this when it’s melting in all our mouths that very minute, and then she takes her bottom teeth out (the top set are already out, lost sometime between breakfast and lunch and likely to turn up any place from the peg basket to the biscuit tin). She uses them as a scoop, grating them through the shallows of the gravy to fish out a potato, and Adrian laughs and Dad smiles and Mum moves her face not a muscle and Paula closes her eyes and Bridget snatches the teeth, rushes to the sink, sluices the teeth, rams them back into Grandma’s mouth.

  Any pudding?

  You haven’t finished your lovely dinner.

  Throw it in the waste bin for God’s sake.

  Hannah!

  Give it to me, come on.

  Adrian!

  Any pudding?

  Bridget takes a bit of the chicken, all cold and ruined by the gravy which only Grandma has because she won’t eat anything not sodden with thick, dark gravy, and Adrian leans across and spears the potatoes knocking aside Dad, who is grappling for one of the drier ones, and Mum removes the plate and plonks down in front of Grandma a bowl of her very special absolutely beautiful apple trifle, which takes half a pint of double cream, a certain sort of apple, sponge which Mum makes herself and loads of time to concoct and we adore it. She puts extra cream on to make it even more sloppy for poor Grandma’s gums. The spoon is put in Grandma’s hand but since she is likely just to shove her mit straight in the cream and begin a plastering job on her face, Bridget has arranged a napkin under her chin. Bridget oohs and aahs and keeps telling Grandma, ‘You Are Certainly Going To Enjoy This Mum,’ and praising my own Mum for making it, reminding Grandma that Jenny has made it specially for her. Grandma takes one mouthful and we brace ourselves and, yes, she spits it out, face contorted with disgust, miserable with disappointment.

  It’s sour!

  Mum, it is not.

  Put some sugar on for her.

  It’s drowned in sugar.

  Just give her straight sugar.

  Adrian!

  It’s sour!

  Mum already has it taken away and passed on to Dad who couldn’t give tuppence that Grandma, in spitting it out, has spat into the bowl and flecks of saliva are spotting the cream. Mum substitutes a bowl of ice cream, chocolate, with chocolate sauce, heavily sweetened, on top of it. Grandma says it’s lovely and begins applying it to every crevice of her skin but getting a good deal down t
he hatch too. Bridget watches her adoringly, pleased she is quiet and content at last. It’s nearly over, the weekly ordeal, the worst of all similar ordeals in the week. We all relax. After the main course we all have a salad before the pudding, a huge green salad with a garlicky dressing. Grandma does not usually want salad but doesn’t like to be left out so Mum makes sure that she goes through the motions of serving Grandma who sometimes does take a bit of green pepper or a sliver of celery and plays with it, but not today; today she most graciously declines and says so clearly that she has had an excellent sufficiency that we all laugh, nicely. Only one more ritual to go.

  Has anyone a cigarette?

  Not yet, Mother, we’re still eating.

  Have it with your tea, Grandma.

  Wait till I’ve left the room.

  Charlie!

  It’s her only pleasure, Charlie.

  Has anyone a cigarette?

  That marks the end, really, unless anyone is foolish enough to have dallied over their salad and not got on to the pudding. Dad takes his with him, not at all put out by Bridget’s reprimand. Bridget of course smokes, as does Paula actually, surprisingly, so she naturally doesn’t mind Grandma filling our house with smoke. Mum hates it but ostentatiously holds her peace, knowing that Dad’s protest is enough. Well, he does get bronchitis often – smoke is bad for him. Adrian has already gone out. He disapproves of smoking, being your sporty health-freak type. We can do without his self-righteousness. Paula has left the table and sits in a corner of the kitchen, thoughtfully opening the window beside her before she has her own cigarette. Grandma shivers melodramatically and announces darkly that there is a draught from somewhere and Bridget, who stays at the table to smoke companionably with her, covers her shoulders with a tartan shawl. She doesn’t bother turning to look at Paula. Paula isn’t really a smoker – it’s seventy-five per cent letting the cigarette burn and only a few puffs. But Bridget – wow. It’s quite frightening, the intensity, the sheer power of the deep drags, the apparent absolute disappearance of the smoke. I used to think she was a magician: I’d get all excited about where it went and Dad would say it wasn’t a trick, that some nice little containers called lungs collected it and that if Bridget could take them out and look at them she’d find they were covered in tar. It was all beyond me, especially as Grandma, quite sharp then, would immediately protect Bridget from her mean brother and say either A Little Of What You Fancy Does You Good or There Is No Harm In It. Bridget is an addict. If she can’t find her cigarettes it’s pitiful to see her. She is frantic, unhinged, almost hysterical. Now, Grandma is never like that. She’s an elegant smoker which, for a woman lacking elegance in any other way, is odd. She has good hands, long-fingered, narrow-palmed, and a pretty way of holding a cigarette. Bridget talks with a cigarette in her mouth. I’ve even seen her drink with it there, but Grandma never does. She smokes slowly, knocks ash off neatly, is relaxed. Bridget is right: it is, next to tea, her one remaining pleasure. And she has the tea now, a big yellow pot of it, strong and dark, though she says repeatedly she hates strong tea. Once, Mum believed her and prepared her finest Darjeeling, poured into a sweet little rosebud-covered cup. Grandma almost had a fit at the ‘coloured water’. Weak tea to Mum is half a pint of water to one tea bag and strong is a whole tea bag in a cup. Weak to Grandma is a whole tea bag in a cup and strong is six in a half pint of water. In her mug – Grandma is only comfortable with large workmen’s mugs – there are three heaped teaspoons of sugar. It is fascinating to watch three more go in, be languidly stirred, tasted, smiled over.

  Here we go. ‘Right,’ Bridget says and stands up. Grandma slowly begins to stand up and asks where are we going and she thought we were going to have lunch. Bridget sits. Grandma sits and says she’s hungry. Mum tells Bridget to for heaven’s sake go and then we have several cross conversations.

  Where’s she going?

  She’ll be fine, Bridget.

  I don’t know why you fuss.

  It’s worse than leaving a baby.

  Do you think I won’t look after her.

  I’ll go, then if –

  Where’s she going?

  She’s gone. Paula’s gone too, five minutes after. Paula has told Bridget she will stay until Grandma has settled, as if it made any difference since Grandma no longer knows who Paula is, but Mum pushes her out, impatient with this dithering. Mum has endless sympathy for Paula, which no one else has, least of all Bridget, and protects her.

  Mum says at least Paula tries, at least she comes, which is more than her dear husband Stuart does. And think, Mum argues, but never persuasively enough for Bridget, think what trouble it causes for Paula, think what she has to put up with from Stuart. Stuart gets left with the children and that, says Mum, amounts to a statement on Paula’s part – she, Paula, is prepared to leave her children on Sunday lunchtimes in order to have lunch with Grandma. It is, Mum claims, amazing. Bridget only laughs. Bridget says Mum is getting carried away, that Paula only does it to spite Stuart. Mum says Paula wouldn’t even attempt to do that, she hasn’t the nerve, and she adds that in a strange kind of way Stuart is secretly pleased Paula makes this weekly pilgrimage: women should, women are supposed to keep the family together. Mousy, scared-looking little Paula with her funny fly-away hair and her old-fashioned stiletto heels is actually doing the right thing.

  And now Bridget has gone too, probably gone to bed with the newspapers and her fags, and Paula has gone back to Stuart who will on no account come and go through this charade, not ever, except for Burns’ Night when he softens (his brother Charlie, my dad, mutters that he only appears on Burns’ Night because he is very partial to whisky, not to please Grandma). Adrian is out, Dad is in front of the television waiting for Match of the Day to start, happily trailing his finger round his empty pudding bowl (and Grandma’s). Mum loads the dishwasher, tidies the kitchen, and I re-fill and re-fill, re-sugar and re-sugar Grandma’s mug. She asks me if I know any poetry and I say no, not a line, and she clucks her tongue and says something about they told me you were dead, Heraclitus. I decide not to be provocative and merely encourage her to recite more. Yards and yards of dismal-sounding rubbish come out. It makes Grandma very happy indeed – the tea, the sugar, a biscuit and poetry. Life is not too bad. She’s forgotten Bridget.

  Then Mum helps her up and I take the other side and Grandma is so happy to be half-cuddled between us that she does a little dance as we walk through to the living room and Dad says that’s a good Highland Fling and Grandma says she thinks she’ll go to the Highlands. We lower her onto the sofa as she asks us to mind her legs, which are sore, then Mum puts a pillow at her head and I fetch the crocheted blanket, crocheted by Grandma in her heyday, a lovely thing in violent colours, and Grandma sighs and says it’s nice to get up in the morning but it’s nicer to stay in your bed. She closes her eyes. The match starts with a roar. Grandma says that men and their football are the very devil and the dirty boots and the filthy clothes and is the water heated ready and men must work and women must weep. She’s asleep. Mum dashes for her coat and runs through instructions while she puts it on: Keep her covered, remind her about the loo when she wakens, only one more cup of tea or she’ll wet the bed and Mildred will give up. Dad grunts. Mum goes.

  And I am here, in my room, wondering. What I want to know is:

  Why don’t more people kill themselves when they get old?

  Why do relatives not kill old people more?

  What is the point of keeping old people alive anyway?

  Haven’t the women had enough, as well as the men?

  Will somebody please tell me?

  *

  There’s the doorbell. It won’t be for me. It’s four o’clock and it will be Bridget. Mum will answer. Bridget will come in. Grandma, still on the sofa, will be furious with her and ask her where in God’s name she’s been. Bridget will say resting. Grandma will laugh, satirically, laugh and exclaim to heaven that some people have all the luck and that if she could have five minutes
to rest it would be a damned miracle. In a minute, Mum will shout for me. There – ‘Hannah, Hannah’ echoing up the stairs and Grandma complaining at the damned noise, has nobody any consideration?

  I get Grandma’s coat, awful bumpy old tweed thing, luridly checked in yellow and black. It’s too small, it seems to me, to go over her alarming bulk especially since she has put two cardigans on, one she knitted herself in what she proudly refers to as Factory Wool, but Bridget says it will do. Bridget hates spending money as much as her brothers do and Grandma is in complete agreement. So we struggle, Bridget and I, to force Grandma into the coat. It’s not really funny. No sooner is one arm in than Grandma turns round and it comes out and the coat is in danger of being put on back to front like a straitjacket. Not a bad idea. Hannah! Just a joke, Bridget. We get it on and Grandma whispers, on cue, that she wants to go to the bathroom (she never, ever uses the words lavatory, loo, lav or toilet). I whistle. Bridget strips the coat off because there’s no chance of Grandma getting her knickers down while it’s on. I wait, perfectly understanding no chances can be taken. Grandma, luckily in this situation, has a very strong bladder. If she says she needs to go, then she needs to go. We have a downstairs lavatory, to which Bridget leads her, then waits patiently outside. A minute or two passes. I lounge in the hall, idly looking at a photograph of Grandma which Dad has framed in an old mahogany frame. Taken circa 1946, I think. Grandma is sitting with baby Bridget on her knee and her two boys, Charlie and Stuart, either side. She looks so pretty, her hair curly and wild, her flowered dress open at the neck to reveal a long, slender throat, the one I’ve just tried to get a scarf round, to cover the knotted veins and loose scrag. Down the hall, the lavatory door opens very, very slowly and Grandma peeps out.

  Are there men about?

  No, Mum. The men are all gone.

  Don’t worry Grandma, I’ll keep watch.