Life of Ma Parker
Mansfield
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  When the literary gentleman, whose flat old Ma
Parker cleaned every Tuesday, opened the door to
her that morning, he asked after her grandson. Ma Parker stood
on the doormat inside the dark little hall, and she stretched out
her hand to help her gentleman shut the door before she replied.
"We buried 'im yesterday, sir," she said quietly.
  "Oh, dear me! I'm sorry to hear that," said the literary
gentleman in a shocked tone. He was in the middle of his
breakfast. He wore a very shabby dressing-gown and carried
a crumpled newspaper in one hand. But he felt awkward. He
could hardly go back to the warm sitting-room without saying
something -- something more. Then because these people set
such store by funerals he said kindly, "I hope the funeral went
off all right."
  "Beg parding, sir?" said old Ma Parker huskily.

 
  Poor old bird! She did look dashed. "I hope the funeral
was a -- a -- success," said he. Ma Parker gave no answer. She
bent her head and hobbled off to the kitchen, clasping the old
fish bag that held her cleaning things and an apron and a pair of
felt shoes. The literary gentleman raised his eyebrows and went
back to his breakfast.
  "Overcome, I suppose," he said aloud, helping himself to the
marmalade.
  Ma Parker drew the two jetty spears out of her toque and hung
it behind the door. She unhooked her worn 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 an agony
to her, but it had been an agony for years. In fact, she was so
accustomed to the pain that her face was drawn and screwed up
ready for the twinge before
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she'd so much as untied the laces.
That over, she sat back with a sigh and softly rubbed her
knees...
  "Gran! Gran!" Her little grandson stood on her lap in his
button boots. He'd just come in from playing in the street.
  "Look what a state you've made your gran's skirt into -- you
wicked boy!"
  But he put his arms round her neck and rubbed his cheek
against hers.
  "Gran, gi' us a penny!" he coaxed.
  "Be off with you; Gran ain't got no pennies."
  "Yes, you 'ave."
  "No, I ain't."
  "Yes, you 'ave. Gi' us one!"
  Already she was feeling for the old, squashed, black leather
purse.
  "Well, what'll you give your gran?"
  He gave a shy little laugh and pressed closer. She felt his
eyelid quivering against her cheek. "I ain't got nothing," he
murmured...


       The old woman sprang up, seized the iron kettle off the gas
stove and took it over to the sink. The noise of the water drumming
in the kettle deadened her pain, it seemed. She filled the
pail, too, and the washing-up bowl.
  It would take a whole book to describe the state of that
kitchen. During the week the literary gentleman "did" for
himself. That is to say, he emptied the tea-leaves now and again
into a jam jar set aside for that purpose, and if he ran out of clean
forks he wiped over one or two on the roller towel. Otherwise,
as he explained to his friends, his "system" was quite simple,
and he couldn't understand why people made all this fuss about
housekeeping.
  "You simply dirty everything you've got, get a hag in once
a week to clean up, and the thing's done."
  The result looked like a gigantic dustbin. Even the floor was
littered with toast crusts, envelopes, cigarette ends. But Ma
Parker bore him no grudge. She pitied the poor young gentleman
for having no one to look after him. Out of the smudgy
little window you
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could see an immense expanse of sad-looking
sky, and whenever there were clouds they looked very worn,
old clouds, frayed at the edges, with holes in them, or dark stains
like tea.
  While the water was heating, Ma Parker began sweeping the
floor. "Yes," she thought, as the broom knocked, "what with
one thing and another I've had my share, I've had a hard life."
  Even the neighbours said that of her. Many a time, hobbling
home with her fish bag, she heard them, waiting at the corner, or
leaning over the area railings, say among themselves, "She's had
a hard life, has Ma Parker." And it was so true she wasn't in the
least proud of it. It was just as if you were to say she lived in the
basement-back at Number 27. A hard life!...
  At sixteen she'd left Stratford and come up to London as
kitchen-maid. Yes, she was born in Stratford-on-Avon.
Shakespeare, sir? No, people were always arsking her about


him. But she'd never heard his name until she saw it on the
theatres.
  Nothing remained of Stratford except that "sitting in the fireplace
of a evening you could see the stars through the chimley,"
and "Mother always 'ad 'er side of bacon 'anging from the
ceiling." and there was something -- a bush, there was -- at the
front door, that smelt ever so nice. But the bush was very
vague. She'd only remembered it once or twice in the hospital,
when she'd been taken bad.
  That was a dreadful place -- her first place. She was never
allowed out. She never went upstairs except for prayers morning
and evening. It was a fair cellar. And the cook was a cruel
woman. She used to snatch away her letters from home before
she'd read them, and throw them in the range because they
made her dreamy....And the beedles! Would you believe it?
 -- until she came to London she'd never seen a black beedle.
Here Ma always gave a little laugh, as though -- not to have
seen a black beedle! Well! It was as if to say you'd never
seen your own feet.
  When that family as sold up she went as "help" to a doctor's
house, and after two years there, on the run from morning till
night, she married her husband. He was a baker.
  "A baker, Mrs. Parker!" the literary gentleman would say.
For occasionally he laid aside his tomes and lent an ear, at least,
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to this product called Life. "It must be rather nice to be married
to a baker!"
  Mrs. Parker didn't look so sure.
  "Such a clean trade," said the gentleman.
  Mrs. Parker didn't look convinced.
  "And didn't you like handing the new loaves to the
customers?"
  "Well, sir," said Mrs. Parker, "I wasn't in the shop above
a great deal. We had thirteen little ones and buried seven of
them. If it wasn't the 'ospital it was the infirmary, you might
say."


  "You might, i_n_d_e_e_d_, Mrs. Parker!" said the gentleman,
shuddering, and taking up his pen again.
  Yes, seven had gone, and while the six were still small her
husband was taken ill with consumption. 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 h_e_r_e_, Mrs. Parker," said
the doctor, "you'd find his lungs chock-a-block with white
powder. Breathe, my good fellow!" And Mrs. Parker never
knew for certain whether she saw or whether she fancied she
saw a great fan of white dust come out of her poor dear
husband's lips...
  But the struggle she'd had to bring up those six little children
and keep herself to herself. Terrible it had been! Then, just
when they were old enough to go to school her husband's sister
came to stop with them to help things along, and she hadn't
been there more than two months when she fell down a flight
of steps and hurt her spine. And for five years Ma Parker had
another baby -- and such a one for crying! -- to look after.
Then young Maudie went wrong and took her sister Alice with
her; the two boys emigrimated, and young Jim went to India
with the army, and Ethel, the youngest, married a good-for-nothing
little waiter who died of ulcers the year little Lennie
was born. And now little Lennie -- my grandson...
  The piles of dirty cups, dirty dishes, were washed and dried.
The ink-black knives were cleaned with a piece of potato and
finished off with a piece of cork. The table was scrubbed,
and the dresser and the sink that had sardine tails swimming
in it...
  He'd never been a strong child -- never from the first. He'd
been one of those fair babies that everyone took for a girl.
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Silvery fair curls he had, blue eyes, and a little freckle like a
diamond on one side of his nose. The trouble she and Ethel
had had to rear that child! The things out of the newspapers


they tried him with! Every Sunday morning Ethel would read
aloud while Ma Parker did her washing.
  "Dear Sir, -- Just a line to let you know my little Myrtil
was laid out for dead...After four bottils..gained 8 lbs.
in 9 weeks, a_n_d_ i_s_ s_t_i_l_l_ p_u_t_t_i_n_g_ i_t_ o_n_."
  And then the egg-cup of ink would came off the dresser and
the letter would be written, and Ma would buy a postal order
on her way to work next morning. But it was no use. Nothing
made little Lennie put it on. Taking him to the cemetery, even,
never gave him a colour; a nice shake-up in the bus never
improved his appetite.
  But he was gran's boy from the first...
  "Whose boy are you?" said old Ma Parker, straightening
up from the stove and going over to the smudgy window. And
a little voice, so warm, so close, it half stifled her -- it seemed to
be in her breast under her heart -- laughed out, and said, "I'm
gran's boy!"
  At that moment there was a sound of steps, and the literary
gentleman appeared, dressed for walking.
  "Oh, Mrs. Parker, I'm going out."
  "Very good, sir."
  "And you'll find your half-crown in the tray of the inkstand."
  "Thank you, sir."
  "Oh, by the way, Mrs. Parker," said the literary gentleman
quickly, "you didn't throw away any cocoa last time you were
here -- did you?"
  "No, sir."
  "V_e_r_y_ strange. I could have sworn I left a teaspoonful of
cocoa in the tin." He broke off. He said softly and firmly,
"You'll always tell me when you throw things away -- won't
you, Mrs. Parker?" And he walked off very well pleased with
himself, convinced, in fact, he'd shown Mrs. Parker that under
his apparent carelessness he was as vigilant 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, patting, the thought of little Lennie was unbearable.
Why did he have to suffer so? That's what she couldn't understand.
Why should a little angel child have to arsk for his
breath and fight for it? There was no sense in making a child
suffer like that.
...From Lennie's little box of a chest there came a sound as
though something was boiling. There was a great lump of
something bubbling in his chest that he couldn't get rid of.
When he coughed, the sweat sprang out of his head; his eyes
bulged, his hands waved, and the great lump bubbled as a potato
knocks in a saucepan. But what was more awful than all was
when he didn't cough he sat against the pillow and never spoke
or answered, or even made as if he heard. Only he looked
offended.
  "It's not your poor old gran's doing it, my lovey," said old
Ma Parker, patting back the damp hair from his scarlet ears.
But Lennie moved his head and edged away. Dreadfully
offended with her he looked -- and solemn. He bent his head
and looked at her sideways as though he couldn't have believed
it of his gran.
  But at the last...Ma Parker threw the counterpane over the
bed. No, she simply couldn't think about it. It was too much
 -- she'd had too much in her life to bear. She'd borne it up till
now, she'd kept herself to herself, and never once had she been
seen to cry. Never by a living soul. Not even her own children
had seen Ma break down. She'd kept a proud face always.
But now! Lennie gone -- what had she? She had nothing.
He was all she'd got from life, and now he was took too. Why
must it all have happened to me? she wondered. "What have
I done?" said old Ma Parker. "What have I done?"
  As she said those words she suddenly let fall her brush. She
found herself in the kitchen. Her misery was so terrible that
she pinned on her hat, put on her jacket and walked out of the


flat like a person in a dream. She did not know what she was
doing. She was like a person so dazed by the horror of what
has happened that he walks away -- anywhere, as though by
walking away he could escape....
  It was cold in the street. There was a wind like ice. People
went flitting by, very fast; the men walked like scissors; the
women trod like cats. And nobody knew -- nobody cared.
Even if she broke down,
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if at last, after all these years, she
were to cry, she'd find herself in the lock-up as like as
not.
  But at the thought of crying it was as though little Lennie
leapt in his gran's arms. Ah, that's what she wants to do, my
dove. Gran wants to cry. If she could only cry now, cry for
a long time, over everything, beginning with her first place and
the cruel cook, going on to the doctor's, and then the seven little
ones, death of her husband, the children's leaving her, and all
the years of misery that led up to Lennie. But to have a proper
cry over all these things would take a long time. All the same,
the time for it had come. She must do it. She couldn't put it
off any longer; she couldn't wait any more....Where could
she go?
  "She's had a hard life, has Ma Parker." Yes, a hard life,
indeed! Her chin began to tremble; there was no time to lose.
But where? Where?
  She couldn't go home; Ethel was there. It would frighten
Ethel out of her life. She couldn't sit on a bench anywhere;
people would come arsking her questions. She couldn't
possibly go back to the gentleman's flat; she had no right to
cry in strangers' houses. If she sat on some steps a policeman
would speak to her.
  Oh, wasn't there anywhere where she could hide and keep
herself to herself and stay as long as she liked, not disturbing
anybody, and nobody worrying her? Wasn't there anywhere
in  the world where she could have her cry out -- at last?


Ma Parker stood, looking up and down.  The icy wind
blew out her apron into a balloon. And now it began to rain.
There was nowhere.