The Face That Must Die Read Online Free Page A

persuade her, sometimes by making wild promises, and spent the week before the move in packing her belongings, since she was either incapable or unwilling. Spending so much time in that house reminded me of my childhood. Remembering how she’d looked after me made me realise how unrecognisable she was now, and how little was left of our relationship. In the garden I burst into tears.
    At first she seemed happy in her new house and finding out where the shops were, two minutes’ walk away. She bought a television, which she’d wanted for many years. I imagined her settling in, making friends, taking strolls along the promenade to which steps led at the bottom of her street. I was as trapped in a fantasy as she was.
    It took me a while to notice she was no longer changing her clothes. People had stolen all the rest and replaced it with inferior stuff which she refused to wear, instead tying it in bundles which she hid around the house. I was visiting her every day, and now that I’d learned to drive I took her touring the nearby countryside. None of this helped: it simply let me believe intermittently that it was a partial solution. Of course I knew it was nothing of the kind.
    By now she often called me several times a day to go round and tell the people to leave her alone — the children, my sister, the man who looked like the devil. Often she told me I was there with her, or someone who was pretending to be me, who looked extremely ill and who had her worried sick. Occasionally I persuaded her that she’d just woken from dreaming. Sometimes I rushed to her house to prove her wrong, but either she denied having called me or the people had just gone: this lady in the corner and the people in the curtains would confirm she was telling the truth, or were they afraid to speak? She knew they weren’t really people in the curtains but photographs of people that someone kept putting in the room — hadn’t I heard of talking pictures? That was as far as I could argue her back towards reality. What was I trying to do, drive her mad so I and that woman could have her house? Oh no, of course, it wasn’t her house, though I’d said it would be. I’d shown her three houses and this was her least favourite, she hadn’t really wanted it at all. . . She refused absolutely to believe that anything was wrong with her or that she needed help.
    I did. For the first time in my life I considered seeking help on her behalf, considered it and was too desperate to behave as she had programmed me to. Even so, I spent months trying to persuade her to enrol with our family doctor until one day I drove her there and dumped her in the waiting-room. She told the doctor I was her husband who had left her for another woman. The doctor agreed with me that something had to be done.
    Nothing could be, since my mother refused help. The doctor referred me to the social services, who ran luncheon clubs and day care centres for the elderly. The case worker made two visits to my mother, at the second of which I was present and saw her fail to explain what services she was offering (presumably assuming, quite unjustifiably, that my mother was capable of remembering what she had been told the first time). She left after five minutes and put the case away among the dormant files. The few times I went to the social services after that she was usually on holiday, or not back from holiday when she was expected, or off sick. Once she told me that perhaps my mother’s hallucinations were company for her. Her colleagues praised her professional competence.
    So began the worst year of my life. I realised that my mother never went out of the house by herself, though she was convinced she did. Her calls became more frequent and more terrified, and all I could do was grow used to them, respond indifferently, tell her I’d be round later. I still visited her every day, though by now we loathed each other: either we had violent arguments in which she clung to the