[adapted]

by
Katherine Mansfield

When the gentleman who was a writer, whose apartment old Ma Parker cleaned every Tuesday, opened the door to her that morning, he asked about her grandson. Ma Parker stood on the doormat inside the dark little hall, and she put out her hand to help the gentleman shut the door before she answered. “We buried him yesterday, sir,” she said quietly.

“Oh, dear me! I’m sorry to hear that,” said the writer in a shocked voice. He was in the middle of his breakfast. He wore a very old dressing-gown and carried a wrinkled newspaper in one hand. But he felt uncomfortable. He could not go back to the warm sitting-room without saying something — something more. Then because these people thought funerals were very important he said kindly, “I hope the funeral went well.”

“Beg pardon, sir?” said old Ma Parker in a rough voice.

Poor old woman! She did look very tired. “I hope the funeral was a — a — success,” he said. Ma Parker gave no answer. She bent her head and walked slowly to the kitchen, holding the old fish bag that held her cleaning things and an apron and a pair of felt shoes. The gentleman who wrote books raised his eyebrows and went back to his breakfast.

“Very upset, I suppose,” he said out loud, taking some of the marmalade for himself.

Ma Parker took the two black pins out of her hat and hung it behind the door. She took off her old jacket and hung that up too. Then she tied her apron and sat down to take off her boots. To take off her boots or to put them on was very painful to her, but it had been very painful for years. In fact, she was so used to the pain that her face was tight and screwed up ready for a sharp pain before she had even untied the laces. When that was over, she sat back with a sigh and softly rubbed her knees....

“Gran! Gran!” Her little grandson stood on her lap in his boots with buttons. He’d just come in from playing in the street.

“Look what a mess you have made your gran’s skirt into — you naughty boy!”

But he put his arms around her neck and rubbed his cheek against her cheek.

“Gran, give us a penny!” he asked nicely.

“Go away; Gran hasn’t got any pennies.”

“Yes, you have.”

“No, I am not.”

“Yes, you have. Give us one!”

Already she was reaching for the old, crushed, black leather purse.

“Well, what will you give your grandma?”

He gave a shy little laugh and pressed closer. She felt his eyelid shaking against her cheek. “I haven’t got anything,” he said softly....

The old woman got up quickly, grabbed the iron kettle off the gas stove and took it to the sink. The sound of the water hitting the kettle made her pain less, it seemed. She filled the bucket, too, and the washing-up bowl.

It would take a whole book to describe how that kitchen looked. During the week the writer took care of himself. That is, he emptied the tea leaves sometimes into a jam jar kept for that purpose, and if he ran out of clean forks he wiped one or two on the towel on the roller. Otherwise, as he told his friends, his “system” was quite simple, and he couldn’t understand why people made all this fuss about housework.

“You simply dirty everything you’ve got, get an old woman in once a week to clean up, and the thing’s done.”

The result looked like a very big dustbin. Even the floor was covered with toast crusts, envelopes, cigarette ends. But Ma Parker did not feel angry with him. She felt sorry for the poor young man for having no one to look after him. Out of the dirty little window you could see a very big area of sad-looking sky, and when there were clouds they looked very worn out, old clouds, torn at the edges, with holes in them, or dark marks like tea.

While the water was heating, Ma Parker began sweeping the floor. “Yes,” she thought, as the broom knocked, “because of this and that I’ve had a lot. I’ve had a hard life.”

Even the neighbours said that about her. Many times, walking slowly home with her fish bag she heard them, waiting at the corner, or leaning over the basement railings, say to each other, “She’s had a hard life, has Ma Parker.” And it was so true she was not at all proud of it. It was just as if you were to say she lived in the back basement at Number 27. A hard life!...

At sixteen she had left Stratford and gone to London as a kitchen maid. Yes, she was born in Stratford-on-Avon. Shakespeare, sir? No, people were always asking her about him. But she had never heard his name until she saw it at the theatres.

Nothing was left of Stratford except that “sitting by the fireplace in the evening you could see the stars through the chimney,” and “Mother always had her side of bacon, hanging from the ceiling.” And there was something — a bush, there was — at the front door, that smelled very nice. But the bush was very unclear. She’d only remembered it once or twice in the hospital, when she’d been very ill.

That was a terrible place — her first place. She was never allowed out. She never went upstairs except for prayers morning and evening. It was a real cellar. And the cook was an unkind woman. She used to take away her letters from home before she’d read them, and throw them in the stove because they made her daydream…. And the beetles! Would you believe it? — until she came to London she had never seen a black beetle. Here Ma always gave a little laugh, as if — not to have seen a black beetle! Well! It was like saying you had never seen your own feet.

When that family had to sell everything she went to work as a maid in a doctor’s house, and after two years there, busy from morning till night, she married her husband. He was a baker.

“A baker, Mrs. Parker!” the gentleman who read books would say. For sometimes he put down his big books and, at least, listened to this thing called Life. “It must be quite nice to be married to a baker!”

Mrs. Parker didn’t look so sure.

“Such a clean job,” said the man.

Mrs. Parker didn’t look sure.

“And didn’t you like giving the new loaves of bread to the customers?”

“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Parker, “I wasn’t in the shop much. We had thirteen children and buried seven of them. If it wasn’t the hospital it was the clinic, you might say!”

“You might, really, Mrs. Parker!” said the man, shaking, and picking up his pen again.

Yes, seven had gone, and while the six were still small her husband became ill with a lung illness. It was flour on the lungs, the doctor told her at the time.... Her husband sat up in bed with his shirt pulled over his head, and the doctor’s finger drew a circle on his back.

“Now, if we were to cut him open here, Mrs. Parker,” said the doctor, “you would find his lungs full of white powder. Breathe, my good man!” And Mrs. Parker never knew for sure whether she saw or whether she only imagined she saw a big cloud of white dust come out of her poor dead husband’s lips....

But the hard time she’d had to raise those six little children and keep to herself. It had been terrible! Then, just when they were old enough to go to school her husband’s sister came to stay with them to help out, and she hadn’t been there more than two months when she fell down the stairs and hurt her back. And for five years Ma Parker had another baby — and one who cried so much! — to look after. Then young Maudie got into trouble and took her sister Alice with her; the two boys moved to another country, and young Jim went to India with the army, and Ethel, the youngest, married a no-good little waiter who died of stomach ulcers the year little Lennie was born. And now little Lennie — my grandson....

The many dirty cups, dirty dishes, were washed and dried. The very black knives were cleaned with a piece of potato and finished with a piece of cork. The table was cleaned well, and the cupboard and the sink that had sardine tails swimming in it....

He had never been a strong child — never from the beginning. He had been one of those light-haired babies that everybody thought was a girl. He had shiny light curls, blue eyes, and a little freckle like a diamond on one side of his nose. The trouble she and Ethel had had to bring up that child! The things from the newspapers they tried on him! Every Sunday morning Ethel would read out loud while Ma Parker did her washing.

“Dear Sir, — Just a line to let you know my little Myrtil was thought to be dead.... After four bottles... gained 8 pounds in 9 weeks, and is still putting on weight.”

And then the egg cup of ink would come off the dresser and the letter would be written, and Ma would buy a money order on her way to work next morning. But it was no use. Nothing made little Lennie put it on. Taking him to the graveyard, even, never made his face pink; a good shake in the bus never made him want to eat.

But he was gran’s boy from the beginning....

“Whose boy are you?” said old Ma Parker, straightening up from the stove and going over to the dirty window. And a little voice, so warm, so close, it almost stopped her breathing — it seemed to be in her chest under her heart — laughed out, and said, “I’m gran’s boy!”

At that moment there was a sound of footsteps, and the writer came, dressed for walking.

“Oh, Mrs. Parker, I’m going out.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And you’ll find your coin in the tray of the ink holder.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Oh, also, Mrs. Parker,” said the writer quickly, “you didn’t throw away any cocoa last time you were here — did you?”

“No, sir.”

“Very strange. I was sure I left a teaspoon of cocoa in the tin.” He stopped. He said softly and firmly, “You’ll always tell me when you throw things away — won’t you, Mrs. Parker?” And he walked away very well pleased with himself, in fact, he was sure he’d shown Mrs. Parker that though he seemed careless he was as watchful as a woman.

The door banged. She took her brushes and cloths into the bedroom. But when she began to make the bed, smoothing, tucking in, patting, the thought of little Lennie was too much for her. Why did he have to suffer so much? That’s what she couldn’t understand. Why should a little angel child have to ask for his breath and fight for it? It did not make sense to make a child suffer like that.

… From Lennie’s little box-like chest there was a sound as if something was boiling. There was a big lump of something bubbling in his chest that he couldn’t get rid of. When he coughed the sweat came out on his head; his eyes stuck out, his hands waved, and the big lump bubbled as a potato bangs in a pot. But worst of all was when he didn’t cough, he sat against the pillow and never spoke or answered, or even seemed to hear. Only he looked annoyed.

“It’s not your poor old gran doing it, my lovey,” said old Ma Parker, gently pushing back the wet hair from his little red ears. But Lennie moved his head and moved away a little. Very upset with her he looked — and serious. He bent his head and looked at her sideways as if he couldn’t believe it of his gran.

But at the end… Ma Parker threw the blanket over the bed. No, she simply couldn’t think about it. It was too much — she’d had too much in her life to take. She had managed until now, she had kept to herself, and never once had anyone seen her cry. Never by any living person. Not even her own children had seen Ma cry like that. She had kept a proud face always. But now! Lennie gone — what did she have? She had nothing. He was all she had got from life, and now he was taken too. Why must it all have happened to me? she wondered. “What have I done?” said old Ma Parker. “What have I done?”