The Face That Must Die Read Online Free Page B

idea that nothing was wrong with her, or hardly spoke. I was becoming everything she feared and hated. Sometimes when I took her for a drive I was tempted to leave her miles from anywhere; sometimes I thought of killing her, reaching across her on a deserted stretch of motorway and opening the passenger door. Perhaps she would leave the gas fire on unlit or finally wander down into the river.
    The doctor could see how I was, and called in the community health officer to visit my mother. He was sympathetic, and more skilful than the social worker at the job she ought to have been doing, but all he could do was visit my mother regularly in the hope of establishing a rapport. Meanwhile my behaviour towards my wife and children grew steadily worse. When we took a fortnight’s holiday in the summer of 1982 I made sure the social services knew I was away, but I was hoping that my mother would either have to go out shopping by herself or starve to death.
    When I came back her house smelled worse and was swarming with flies, but otherwise nothing had changed: the same arguments, the same helpless mutual loathing. She had clearly not been out of the house. She accused me of having stolen her key, and when I showed her she had several copies in her purse, insisted that they didn’t fit the lock. She went to the front door to demonstrate, and I watched her trying to turn the lock with a box of matches.
    Either I was able to see clearly at last that she needed constant supervision, or two weeks’ respite had made me even less able to cope. I called the community health officer, who had concluded independently that part of his problem in establishing a rapport was that my mother felt (however bitterly) she could always rely on me. I told her that I wouldn’t be visiting her for three weeks; if she needed anything she would have to call on the services available, whose phone numbers I had posted on the wall above the phone. Surely this would break down her obduracy.
    She called me a couple of days later to ask if we were still friends. Those were just about her last words to me. Nearly two weeks later I heard from the community health officer. He’d visited my mother’s house two days running but had received no answer. I hurried round and let myself in.
    The kitchen and most of the hall were flooded by a tap that had been left full on. My mother lay on the sofa, breathing but past waking. She looked twenty years older. The kitchen drawers were full of liquescent sliced bread, months old. The television was turned over on its screen; a mirror lay smashed in the hall. From the cuts on her hand it seemed she must have punched her reflection in the face.
    I called the community health officer and drove to the social services. The case worker was off sick, and the officer I spoke to complained that it was nearly her lunch hour. She tried to make me feel guilty enough about my mother to go away, until I began to scream at her. I should not like to have to rely on most of the Wallasey social workers I met, and perhaps after all it was to the good that my mother never had.
    Our doctor and the community health officer had her admitted to hospital that afternoon. She’d regained consciousness, and was pitifully grateful both to see me and to go into hospital. I hoped this would be the first step towards her going into care, but every time I visited the hospital she seemed worse. Soon she didn’t recognise me. Sometimes she lay with her eyes moving back and forth very fast, like a metronome. I fed her water from a toddler’s lidded cup, managing a cupful an hour if she didn’t spit it out. Less than two weeks after she had been admitted, the ward sister called to say she had died during the night. I feel she died of my neglect and of my having destroyed her memories.
    You may feel that all this has strayed rather far from the source of The Face That Must Die and of my fiction generally, but I wouldn’t have known where to stop. I think it