Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📕

the shopkeepers are cross because they are about to close and there is only tripe left. It would not be unreasonable, to take the omnibus with such an aim, as it would be from laziness, though it would probably not occur to Mamma do to such a thing. She will walk past the stop, she decides, and take the bus if one comes; Mamma will be angry if there is no supper and only disappointed if she learns that Ally has taken a bus instead of walking. Her throats tightens at the thought of Mamma’s anger, and then again in irritation with herself for caring so much. She remembers herself holding the scalpel, herself remembering to protect the urethra, to deliver the child down over the perineum as the seconds flickered away. Herself controlling her patient’s bleeding with death at her shoulder as she worked. She should have outgrown the fear of Mamma. But has not.

She rounds the corner. There is a bus. It is not raining so very hard, she thinks. If she has money to spare for bus tickets, it could be given to a hungry family, to any Mamma’s charities, rather than used to spare a healthy and well-fed woman a walk of barely two miles. It is not as if her day’s work has been physically demanding. The bus moves off, and Ally quickens her pace through the puddles and the dusk.

The house stands unlit, the gate shadowed by the privet hedge. The sky seems darker here and there is half a moon in the taller beech tree and the suggestion of moonlight on the wet grass. The gate has swollen in the rain and is stiff; her footsteps crash on the gravel path. She fumbles for her key, inside her purse inside her coat pocket, with cold hands, and has to peer to find the keyhole. This is the day’s lowest point, she reminds herself, the return to a chill dark house and the need to begin again, to clean and prepare a meal, when it feels as if the day’s work is done. There are women all over the city who have been standing in a factory all day and are now returning to the needs of their husbands and children; she has no business complaining of a house that is too large and empty. Leaving the door open for the sake of the light from the street, she feels for the matches in the niche at the bottom of the stairs, a niche where Papa used to keep a great vase painted with peacock feathers and now there is only dust soft under her fingertips. She lights the lantern and then sees that there was a fat letter on the doormat and that she has walked on it, left a wet brown footprint smudging the ink on the front and crossing the pale blue stamp. Japanese Empire, Five Sen, and a white chrysanthemum, her Falmouth address crossed out for redirection. He thinks she is still there, still sleeping in his bed and waking each morning to the sight of his garden. Or at least he did think that, six weeks ago when the letter was posted. Later, she thinks. It is important that there should be food ready when Mamma comes home.

The potatoes are soft to the knife and the cabbage has brightened in the pan. She drains them through the old colander from which one handle has been lost, leaning over the sink to feel the steam curl around her face. She is real, she has a body, hands that feel the pain of the hot pan and cold skin on which steam condenses. She has a letter in her pocket, and a ring on her finger. She saved two lives today. She takes a plate down from the rack where she left it to dry last night and pulls the lid off the flour jar. Liver is to be dredged with seasoned flour before frying, and although Mamma regards seasoning as unnecessary it is Ally’s view that omitting this step altogether would have an unappetising result. The flour must be damp and does not pour onto the plate, so Ally shakes the jar and half of it, a good pound of flour, falls in a squared lump and explodes on the floor. She’s hardly started to clear it up when she hears Mamma’s key in the lock and can only wait, kneeling on the flour in her blue dress, for Mamma to find what she has done.

What possible reason can you find for such behaviour, Alethea? For such waste? Do you not know, can you not think, what demands are made on my time and energies during the day that I should return to this disorder in my own house? I do not know how your husband can bear your carelessness and wasteful habits, it is no wonder he has gone away. I suppose it is asking too much that you should clear up this mess. Do not imagine, Alethea, that your true motives go unseen. Do not imagine that I will wait upon you as the servants in my sister’s house have done, as I suppose you must have required your husband to do. Until he left you. Clean the floor, please, Alethea. And then get to your bed. I cannot bear further messing in my kitchen and a night’s fasting will do neither of us any harm.

Mamma’s skirts, always cut high because of places she goes and the roads and floors she walks, swing above the floor and the kitchen door closes behind her. No slamming, not in this house, no throwing or shouting, no hand raised in anger. Only words.

Words and a candle flame offered on her tenth birthday. Show me how you can bear pain, Alethea. Show me how you can choose to endure.

Lying hands at her sides with her skirts lifted for Mamma and Dr. Henry to apply blisters. The best cure for weak nerves,