The Radiant Way. Margaret Drabble

cabbage is delicious,’ said Dora, quickly. She and Shirley exchanged glances.

      ‘And how’s your mother, Shirley?’ asked Mrs Harper, carefully and conspicuously laying her clove on the side of her plate; taking the offensive.

      ‘She’s much the same as ever,’ said Shirley. ‘Thanks.’

      ‘Pity she couldn’t be with us,’ said Mrs Harper, dangerously: but Shirley hadn’t the energy to fight back, she helped herself to a spoonful of sage and onion stuffing and sat down to begin her meal. Those served earlier had nearly finished: they didn’t believe in standing on ceremony, in the family. They ate what was in front of them. While it was hot.

      ‘She doesn’t get out much,’ said Shirley flatly: a statement at once accurate and wonderfully, gloriously misleading: ‘she doesn’t get out much’, an acceptable phrase, a dull little coin, an everyday coin, suggesting a mild, an ordinary, a commonplace disinclination, for in Northam ‘getting out’ was in many circles regarded as suspect, as improper, as leading to no good (those making merry in Breasbrough, for example, were undoubtedly up to no good) – a freak tolerated in the young, though with much grumbling, but considered dissolute, wayward, against nature in their elders. ‘She doesn’t get out much’, a phrase that Shirley had learned to use of her mother to forestall inquiry, impertinence, sympathy: a middle-aged phrase that she heard in her own voice as parody – indeed, she had noticed that when ‘the family’ gathered together all of them spoke in parodies of clichés, and some of them knew quite well that they were doing it. Dora knew, Cliff knew, Fred knew. And everybody there at that table knew that in the case of Shirley Harper’s mother, the phrase ‘she doesn’t get out much’ conveyed the distilled essence of a withdrawal so extreme that the term agoraphobia would hardly do it justice.

      ‘No, she doesn’t get out much,’ she repeated, almost defiantly, wondering if her sister Liz would bother to ring their mother that night, and if she didn’t, if it mattered. What an extraordinary childhood they had survived. Odd that both of them had turned out almost normal. ‘Her eyesight’s not too good now,’ she continued, as though that might somehow render her mother’s behaviour less odd, as though by mere words she could be converted into a harmless, ordinary, ageing old lady, just like other people’s mothers. And indeed, with old age, Rita Ablewhite was beginning to appear slightly less abnormal: behaviour strange in a healthy thirty-five-year-old was more acceptable at seventy. ‘She’s even agreed to have Meals On Wheels,’ Shirley volunteered, as nobody else was saying anything.

      ‘That must take a bit of the burden off you,’ said Mrs Harper, lining up a peppercorn by the clove.

      ‘Oh yes it does,’ said Shirley. ‘It’s a wonderful service, you know.’

      This innocent remark, which Shirley had injudiciously thought platitudinous enough to pass without comment, stirred her brother-in-law Steve to speech: he launched into an attack upon the City Council and the high rates, an attack guaranteed to annoy Uncle Fred, upset his mild dumb father, and plunge his brother Cliff into the deepest financial anxiety. It had been a bad year for Cliff, and it was as easy to blame the Council as anyone. On they went, the men, talking men’s talk of rates and the threatened steel strike and the Marxist lunatics at the Town Hall; of the closure of the Timperley works, of the three hundred made redundant at Brook and Partridge, of the folly of running courses of lectures at public expense in the Hartley Library on Nuclear Disarmament and Feminist Opportunities in Local Government. ‘It’s disgusting,’ contributed Mrs Harper from time to time, presenting her flat, mean, worthless little counter simply because she could not bear to remain silent, to sit back while others played, although she recognized herself temporarily outnumbered, ‘disgusting, I call it,’ and Shirley, hearing this phrase for the millionth time, had a vision of households all over Britain in which censorious, ignorant old bags like her mother-in-law, who had never done anything for the public good, who had nothing positive ever to contribute to any argument, passed judgement on others while stuffing themselves with goose and roast potatoes and sprouts and apple sauce. The backbone of the nation, the salt of the earth. And there was poor Fred, speaking up for the reviled council block in which he, unlike any of the others, lived: ‘Nay, it’s not that bad, it’s a lot of it exaggeration,’ he interposed mildly, as Steve repeated the time-worn allegation that it wasn’t safe to walk under the deck walkways for fear of having a television set or an old mattress chucked on your head: ‘Nay, it’s not that bad at all.’

      ‘You’d have thought your Brian could have found you somewhere a bit more comfortable,’ interposed Mrs Harper, seeing her opportunity of introducing Brian to his disadvantage, ‘he must know a few folk, it’s not only money that counts. . . .’ and her voice trailed away, as she simultaneously managed to imply that Brian had the Town Hall in the palm of his hand, and that he had enough money to buy his father a comfortable bungalow in a nice suburb whenever he felt like it. Shirley watched Fred return Mrs Harper’s grease-smeared, red-nosed gaze: affable, broad, patient, he stared at her, and wiped his mouth on his table napkin. She could see his decision not to bother to try to explain that Brian hardly knew anybody in Northam Town Hall, and that Brian’s salary as Head of Humanities at an Adult Education College hardly rose to paying his own mortgage, let alone to buying a house for his ageing father. She applauded this decision. It was not worth presenting reasoned arguments to Mrs Harper. When they appeared before her, she shifted her ground, with an agility that occasionally suggested to Shirley that perhaps she was not after all impenetrably stupid, but on some dismal level quite intelligent. ‘Nay,’ said Fred, ‘I like it where I am, it suits me where I am, I wouldn’t want to be moving at my age. I’ve been in that block since it was built, it suits me fine. There’s a grand view, you know.’ He looked at his niece Dora. ‘Your auntie loved it. We used to sit in the evenings and watch the lights come on.’ He looked back at Mrs Harper. ‘You ought to come and visit me one day. You’d be surprised.’ Mrs Harper sniffed and moved her clove half an inch.

      You could see she thought Fred had cheated by mentioning his dead wife: any minute now if she didn’t watch her step he might drag in his dead daughter too. The conventions prevented her from heaping any further abuse on Chay Bank, a housing project which she had frequently and loudly denounced, but near which she had never set foot: the precariousness of her own social position would forever prevent her from visiting Fred Bowen, and this yearly ritual meeting on neutral ground was as much as she would ever dare risk.

      ‘You’d be surprised,’ Fred insensitively urged. ‘My Brian’s Alix thinks it’s lovely. She invited her Mum and Dad over from Leeds specially to have a look last time they were up here. We had a very nice tea.’

      Now that was almost cruel, thought Shirley, as she offered second helpings. Fred had gone too far, had widened the discourse unfairly. Alix, whom Brian had so unexpectedly married, represented a world beyond articulate resentment, too remote to attack. Brian they could get at, but not Alix. They didn’t understand her well enough. They didn’t like her, but they didn’t know why.

      Celia Harper, youngest child of Shirley and Cliff, too young to be allowed to escape to the disco, sat silent throughout the meal. She ate minimally. Sometimes her lips would move slightly, as though she were repeating something to herself. Nobody paid her any attention at all.

      Shirley began to stack the plates. Nobody wanted any more, which was just as well, as there wasn’t much left and she couldn’t face hacking at the carcase.

      Cliff would never carve. His father hadn’t carved before him, so Cliff wouldn’t carve. Fatherless Shirley knew perfectly well that most British men carved, and that it was a bit of bad luck that she happened to have married into a family where the women were expected to wield the knife. She wondered if her sister Liz carved. Probably not. That dreadful Charles would be brilliant at the job. She wheeled the trolley into the kitchen, and took the plum tart out of the oven. The oven clock said it was only five to eight. It felt like midnight, and they’d have to sit up till midnight. She’d persuaded the old folk to eat far later than usual anyway and it was still only five to eight. She wondered if there was any hope of getting them to play cards after supper instead of watching telly. She herself would much, much rather play cards. In the old days they all played cards. They’d