A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman by Margaret Drabble. Part 2.
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In the morning, she woke up, as usual, at about half-past seven, and thought of the day ahead. Every day, she got up regularly at a quarter to eight, and gave the children their breakfast. Various people, including her husband, suggested from time to time that she should engage somebody to help her with these things, but she always said that she preferred to do them herself, she liked to be with the children and she did not like other people to see her at that hour in the morning. Also, she would say, smiling disbelievingly, I’m afraid I might get lazy. If I give myself half an excuse, I might get lazy and stay in bed.
On this particular morning, it did cross her mind that she might stay in bed all day.
I really do not see the point of carrying on, she thought, as she lay there and remembered what had happened to her the night before. I cannot possibly win, she thought.
Whatever I do, I will lose, that is certain. I might as well stay in bed.
But no, she thought, it is more honourable to fight to the death.
So she got out of bed.
She had not often thought in these terms before. Rather, she used to say to herself, If death were announced, I would continue, like a saint, to sweep the floor. She had not thought, much, of winning or losing or battlefields.
She had her bath, as she always did, and while she was in the bath her eldest child brought her the post and the papers and opened her letters for her. She read The Times while she got dressed and looked at the Guardian while she brushed her hair. Then, before going down to breakfast, she read the lists of things to be done that lay by her bedside table. There were several lists, old and new, and it was never safe to read the newest one only. Some of the words on the lists were about shopping: haricot beans, it said at one point; Polish sausage, at another; then vitamin pills; shoelaces for Mark; raw carrots (?); Clive Jenkins; look up octroi. It would be hard to tell whether these notes were a sign of extreme organization or of panic. She could not tell herself. Carried over from list to list was a message that said Hospital Thursday. This seemed to indicate either that she was so worried about going to the hospital that she kept repeating the message to herself, neurotically, night after night, or that she was so little aware of it that she thought she might forget. But today was the day, so she would not forget.
She went downstairs and made breakfast. Two children wanted bacon sandwiches, and one said she would eat only a slice of leftover melon. She made herself a cup of coffee, and while they ate, she emptied the dishwasher and started to restack it, and took the dry clothes out of the airing cupboard and sorted them into piles to put away in drawers. Then she encouraged the children to put on their coats and shoes, and took them out, and put them in the car and drove them to school. They were all, by now, at the same school, which made life easier, as she would cheerfully remark. She remembered to remind them, as they ran off, that she would not be there to collect them, as she had an appointment, but that Faith would collect them and give them tea and supper. Then she went home and remembered to put a pound note in an envelope in the cupboard for Faith, in case she left before she herself got home in the evening.
She would have done this, if her husband were home, but as usual he had not said whether he would be home or not, so she had to provide for every possibility, and one of these was that Faith would want to find a pound note in the cupboard.
Then she made the beds, and put the dry washing away, and stacked the breakfast things and ran down to the shops (which were luckily near) to buy tea and supper for the children, because although Faith was perfectly capable of doing this in theory, in practice she always did something silly, and anyway the women in the shops always shortchanged her with Jenny’s money because she wasn’t English, and Jenny did not consider herself quite rich enough to be shortchanged every day, though sometimes she let it go. Then, when these things were done (it was now half-past nine), she went up to her bedroom to change, because she couldn’t possibly spend the whole day in the jersey and skirt she was wearing, because she had to go and give the prizes at a School Speech Day that evening and wouldn’t have time to come home to change in between all the other things she had to do. She was due at a committee meeting at ten-thirty; she would make it all right, but only if she made her mind up quickly about what to wear.