Signs for Lost Children Sarah Moss (best way to read books .TXT) 📖

and upland heath. She remembers the woods that in a few weeks will be dusted and then blanketed with bluebells. The bluebells are quite startling, said Tom, and when you see them you will know that I am on my way home. She sips her tea, feels the heat trace her oesophagus. She needs to go back, she thinks. It will be better there.

‘When you and Tom are settled again, may I come and visit?’ asks Annie. ‘Cornwall always sounds so romantic.’

She and Annie could walk on the coast path while Tom is out at work. In summer, they could picnic on the rocks of Castle Beach and perhaps take the train to St Ives where Annie would enjoy the cobbled lanes and the ancient chapel on the hilltop.

‘It can rain for weeks. And some of those picturesque fishermen are desperately poor. But I’d love you to visit, Annie, truly.’

She will return to Falmouth, and the summer will come again and the sea sparkle in the early mornings. She has not thought properly of Tom, of his body and his smile, for a long time. She must write to him, now he is settled in Kyoto, and describe the snowdrops and the news of George’s success at Cambridge. For the first time in weeks, she thinks of the globe, of Tom there on the other side of it. There is snow in Kyoto still, but the days are lengthening as they are here and the skies are blue over the white mountains. She turns the ring on her left hand, which fits better than it did a few weeks ago. With this ring, I thee wed. With my body, I thee worship. Really, Alethea, are you fallen so far as to find justification in your marital relations?

‘Are you quite well, Ally?’

Aunt Mary sets down her cup and lifts her feet from her footstool. ‘I believe I forgot to ask Mrs. Hayfield about the soufflé. Do excuse me, girls.’

Girls no more, Ally thinks. They watch Aunt Mary’s upright back, her bustled green skirt, cross the room.

Annie sits forward. ‘Ally? You looked suddenly pained.’

Ally closes her eyes. Annie won’t question her sanity, won’t send her to the asylum. Probably.

‘It is Mamma’s voice. Her remarks. It’s not an auditory hallucination, I don’t imagine that her voice makes sound, but she is always in my thoughts. Questioning my motives. I cannot decide to go for a walk without reflecting that perhaps it is an act of self-indulgence to fritter away my time so, or then to remain at home without reproaching myself for idleness. If I do not eat I think that perhaps I am seeking attention and excuse for inactivity by remaining weakened and thin, but if I enjoy Aunt Mary’s table I am guilty of sensual indulgence. And I cannot tell any longer which thoughts are mine and which hers.’ Which reason and which madness, or whether it is her own ideas or Mamma’s that represent a rational mind.

Annie reaches for Ally’s hand and then thinks better of it, but Ally wouldn’t mind, not just now. ‘She is a terrible woman.’

Ally shakes her head. ‘No, Annie. She is capable of great kindness and endless, selfless work for the good of those who receive nothing from anyone else. She has given her whole life to the untiring service of the most degraded women and looked for nothing, no gratitude or appreciation, in return.’

‘I know. But it seems that the cost of such dedication has been paid by you and May, and your Papa.’

Ally’s throat hurts. ‘No. No, we must not say that. That a woman must choose between her work and her family obligations. That she must devote herself first and always to her husband and children. No-one says that of men. She has a right to her work.’

Annie shrugs. ‘To be sure. But also an obligation to her children, and indeed the obligation that we all share: to be kind to each other. There is no exemption, short of insanity, from kindness. Tell me, Ally, do you intend a large family?’

‘No. You know that.’

‘If you have a child, will you employ a nurse?’

‘You know that too. But Annie, our work is paid. It allows for the employment of nurses. And May and I had Jenny, and then went to school. Mamma was not neglectful.’

Not yet, it isn’t paid. Not in Ally’s case.

‘Oh, Al. She was negligent. At best, negligent. Whatever her virtues elsewhere. It isn’t the point, the politics of women’s pay. Tell me more about hearing her voice.’

But it is the point, Ally thinks. Annie is able to say otherwise only because her domestic life is easy, because her parents appear to live without recrimination. There is no separation between what Annie calls the politics of women’s pay and the formation of women’s minds. Mamma was trained to philanthropy, not to a professional life. Mamma was taught to set no price or value on her own time and effort, to understand her own labours merely as the justification of her existence. The labourer is worthy of her hire, Ally thinks, though she wishes her mind would not produce a Biblical text as the last word on any given subject. It is not as if Mamma’s own girlhood equipped her with the opportunities she made sure to give to Ally and May. It is not as if Mamma had the choices, or indeed the Dutch rubber device, available to Ally. Mamma also is a creature of circumstance, of history and location, as are we all. Mamma works, Ally sees, because she does not believe that she deserves to live. Mamma justifies herself by work. And so does Ally. There must be better metaphors for life than money, than numbers. Consider the lilies of the field, Mamma. How they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin.

‘Her voice is disabling. It makes any action impossible. If I read, I am guilty of indolence but if I do not read I reveal the trivial