The Lying Days

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One Saturday in late August when my friend Olwen Taylor’s mother telephoned to say that Olwen would not be able to go to the bioscope because she was going to a wedding, I refused to go with Gloria Dufalette (I heard Mrs. Dufalette’s call, out the back door in the next house — Gloriah, Gloriah!) or with Paddy Connolly. — Paddy Connolly’s little brother picked his nose, and no member of his family stopped him doing it.—

“What’ll she do, then?” asked my father.

My mother was pinning her hair ready for her tennis cap, looking straight back at herself in the mirror. Up-down, went her shoulders. “I don’t know. She’s not pleased with anything I suggest.”

But her indifference was not real. She followed me out into the garden where I stood in the warm still winter afternoon. “Now what are you going to do? Do you want to come with Mommy and Daddy and bring your book?” New powder showed white where the sun shone full on her nose and chin; it seemed to emphasize the fact that she was ready and waiting and yet held back. In a sense of power, I did not answer; my mother’s face waited, as if I had spoken and she had not quite heard. “Eh? What are you going to do?”

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