Every Day Is Mother's Day by Hilary Mantel Read Free Book Online Page A

has been handed over to me. I hope to be able to help you with any problems that arise.
    Yours sincerely,
ISABEL FIELD

CHAPTER 2
    “Isabel,” Colin said. “Isabel.”
    “Don’t slobber, Colin.”
    “You are unkind.”
    “Oh?”
    “You are vastly too good, Isabel. You make it plain.”
    “Yes.” Isabel wound down the window of the car. A dank semi-rural darkness entered. She lit a cigarette.
    “Colin, why do you always lock the doors?”
    Heaving and sighing.
    “The car doors, Colin, why do you insist on locking your passengers in? Oh, come on, Colin. A bit of coherent conversation.”
    “The A6 murder,” Colin said.
    “What?”
    “This. Murder. Similar. Circumstances. Night, a field, or a tract of, I don’t remember, some open ground, I suppose, by the side of the road. Hanratty. Before your time.”
    “Oh, Colin.” She put out a narrow cold hand to find his face. “Colin, you are a worrier.”
    “Personally, I think the conviction was unjust,” Colin said.“I’m against capital punishment. The truth is, Isabel, now forgive me, it’s rather maudlin I know, but the truth is Isabel, I’m against death. Death in any form.”
    She sighed, in the damp darkness of the passenger seat.
    “Sylvia,” he said. “Sylvia is forbidding me eggs. My arteries. She read these things. Aagh.” He let out a long breath, releasing his tie further with one hand. He heaved across to her, wet and sweating. “Do you know, sometimes I feel very much like suicide. But I had a good idea the other week. I thought I would buy myself a record of the Marches of Sousa. And if I felt really tempted to suicide, I would play it. You wouldn’t kill yourself after that—after you’d marched about a bit. It would be too ridiculous. Isabel, Isabel.” He pressed his face into her neck. It was a source of constant amazement to him that she did not pull away; not every time.
     
    This is October. Isabel is just a name on a letter, received by someone else.
    This is Colin off to his evening class. Sylvia is clattering the dishes together in the sink, slamming them with dangerous force onto the stainless-steel draining board. It is clear that she thinks Creative Writing a waste of time. Early evening bouts of violence echo from the lounge; the air hangs heavy and blue with gunsmoke, the children squat before the TV set, their mouths ajar.
    “You see nothing of them,” Sylvia says. (This conversation has been held before.)
    Colin reverses himself and strides back into the room, swerving to avoid cracking his shins on the coffee table. Blocking the TV he treads the carpet before his offspring like a Lippizan stallion; but not very like.
    “They,” he reports, “see nothing of me.”
    “What?”
    “I wafted in there and stood in front of the television. Theydidn’t address me by name. They saw me merely as an obstruction to their view.”
    “Waft?” Sylvia says. “You couldn’t waft. Never in a million years could you waft.”
    “They’re in a state of advanced hypnosis. Deep Trance. Tell me,” he says, “why couldn’t I have gifted children? It would have been an interest for me. Why can’t they all be little Mozarts?”
    “We haven’t got a piano,” Sylvia says.
    “I’m away.” Going out, Colin stuffs his notebook into his pocket.
    In the hall mirror he glimpses his own face, weakly handsome, frowning, abstracted. He loosens the knot of his tie. Despite what Florence said about him aging, he looks years younger than his wife. He tries the effect of a boyish lopsided grin. It reminds him of something; his father’s hemiplegia perhaps. He erases it from his face and departs, banging the door behind him.
     
    There were some eighteen people in the classroom, rather more female than male, rather more old than young. Teacher was rubbing the leftover algebra off the board, a plump lady in a cardigan, and chalking up the words WRITING FOR PLEASURE AND PROFIT . Excuse me, said Colin, stumbling through the desks and