This is a story I started to write for Mothering Sunday, but I didn't get it finished in time.  So I'm putting it up now anyway.


“Spring planter, then?...  Yes, I'll give you my credit card number now.  It will get there for Mothering Sunday, won't it?”

“Well, it’s Friday today, sir.  Should be OK.”

Would it, though?  It would never do to give his mother something too big or too small, or the wrong sort of present, daffodils when she had daffodils in the garden at home, chocolates when she had given them up for Lent, to have Mother say, “Well, it’s the thought that counts, darling.”  

He could see his mother now, sitting at the head of the table at The King’s Head, for the traditional family Mothers’ Day dinner, the overpowering smell of roast meat and overdone vegetables, steamy warmth inside and clammy cold outside, everybody in best clothes and on best behaviour.  He would be wearing a suit, Tessa the outfit she got out for weddings and Christenings, Sophie and Toby in their “best” clothes, which would, sooner or later, get stained or torn.  As always, Mother would rustle in acres of pink skirt and petticoats, pearls dripping from her neck.  

Steve would have to kiss the layers of foundation on her cheek, muttering, “You’re looking wonderful as usual, Mother,” and his father would hover in the background, holding her coat, praying that everything would be right for her.  Steve’s father had spent his life trying to please Mother, and, from an early age, Steve and his brothers had learned to do the same.  

As he put his credit card away, he looked at his watch.  As he was speaking on the phone, he had been aware of everyone else leaving the staffroom, and now so must he.  Picking up a pile of exercise books, he hurried off to his next class and factors in the downfall of the Weimar Republic.  

“What would have happened if Hitler hadn't come along?” he asked Tessa when he arrived home.

Tessa pursed her lips.  “Well …”  She was a history graduate too.  They had met at university.  “I think that, if it hadn't been Hitler, another dictator would have emerged.”

He nodded.  ”That’s what the kids said when we discussed it this morning.  They’re really into Germany in the 1930s.”

“Mummy!”

“Suppose I’d better go and do the bedtime story,” she said.  “The Tiger That Came for Tea” -again.”  

“They’ve had “The Tiger That Came for Tea” every night for a fortnight.  Doesn’t it do your head in?”

She shrugged.  “It’s what children do, isn't it?  And anything’s better than teaching.”  

Steve drew in his breath as he watched go upstairs.  His mother would no doubt comment on Tessa not having a job on Sunday.  “Mothers don’t stay at home now, darling.”  And Tessa would have to explain – again – that she enjoyed being at home for their children.  Mother had worked, as a secretary (“No.  Personal assistant to the Director, darling.”) during an age when mothers were not expected to work.  

“I ordered something for Mother.  It cost £34.99,” he explained during their evening meal.

Tessa pulled a face.  “They don’t half rack up the prices for Mothering Sunday.”  Steve and Tessa didn’t have a lot of money.  

Steve bit his lip.  Tessa’s present to her mother stood on the window-ledge, already wrapped up, hyacinth bulbs which she had bought – in October, when they were cheap – and planted in pots.  Being a domestic goddess gave Tessa more kicks than teaching ever had.

His mother didn’t approve of his career either.  Both his brothers worked in the City, as had his father, all lawyers.  “You can't do anything with a history degree,” she had told him on his graduation day.  “The Law Society does conversion courses, you know.”  She might have approved of teaching as a career, if he had been at a posh school, but not Westgate, which was as “bog-standard” as “bog-standard” gets, pupils obsessed with sex and computer games.  He had whetted his stroppy Year 11 class’s interest in the Weimar Republic by talking about fishnets and suspenders and getting them to take part in the discussion afterwards had left him with a warm glow of satisfaction all afternoon.  He could teach.  He could control a class.  A man among boys, a boy among men – that is what they used to say about schoolmasters, wasn’t it?

On Saturday afternoon Steve and Tessa took Sophie (five) and Toby (two) to the swimming pool, alongside every other children in the town, it seemed, all of them shrieking at once.  Toby took off his trunks as they were getting out and Sophie attempted to cover him with her water-wings.  She was resourceful, like her mother.  Tessa found his trunks, in a plant pot by the poolside.

They drove home at about 6 o'clock, passing garages selling overpriced plastic-looking scarlet tulips in tight cellophane packets, passing a massive window display of yellow and blue things in pots in Tesco.  On the corner, where they turned off for their village, the owner of the convenience store was sticking “reduced” labels on to his Mothering Sunday potted plants.  But it was all right, though Steve.  He had ordered his spring planter thing-y.

Back at home it was fish fingers and “The Tiger Who Came for Tea” – again.  Steve felt that familiar knot forming in his stomach as the evening wore on:  Mothering Sunday lunch.  Would it be all right?  He lingered downstairs, watching a film about the First World War.  When he did make his way to bed, his footfall on the stairs must have awoken Sophie, because she called out to him in a hoarse whisper, “Daddy! Daddy!”

“Ssh!” he said, putting his head around her bedroom door.  “Go to sleep, Sophie.”

“Daddy, it’s Mummy’s Day tomorrow.”  

“Yes, darling.”  He pulled the duvet over her.

“Daddy, at school we made daffodils with egg boxes and straws.”

“Yes, darling.”

“But I gave mine to Mummy on Friday.  What are we going to give her for a proper Mummy’s Day present?”

Steve jolted wide awake, as horror and embarrassment welled up inside him in equal measure and trickled down his face in panic-driven sweat.  

For a moment, he thought about jumping into the car and dashing round to Tesco’s but then he remembered that they shut at ten on Saturdays.  

And the convenience store would have shut at eight.  

And the garage would be selling petrol only through a hatch in the window.

Then Tessa called out to him.  “You coming to bed?”

He couldn't sleep.  Oh yes, he had ordered his mother’s spring planter.  Why had he spent so much money on Mother?  Because Mother expected it.  Mother liked what she called “nice things”, expensive things.  Mother had gone to work, not to strike a blow for women’s freedom, but to keep herself in the manner to which she wished to become accustomed.

“But you need money,” Mother had said when Tessa, pregnant, had given up work.  “You have to have things when you have children.”  She had cast her eyes around their living room.  “You’ll need a bigger house.  You can't bring up children in a house like this.”

Tessa had met her eye as Steve, nor his brothers, nor his father had dared to do.  “The best things in life are free, Doreen.”

He slept, a little, waking on hearing Sophie playing in her room.  After a few minutes, he went into her room, meaning to tell her to be quiet and not wake Toby.  She was staring out the bedroom window.

“Daddy,” she said, “we could pick flowers.”

Steve’s tired brain clutched at a straw.  Wild flowers?  The best things in life are free, aren’t they?  He too looked out the window.  He sighed.  “Darling, there aren’t any.”

“Yes, there are, Daddy.  There’re lots!”  She pointed to daffodils and narcissi in neighbours’ gardens.  

“Sophie, we pick those…”

Why not?  They were desperate.  “Comprehensive teacher found stealing daffodils,” the headline in the local paper would read.  But only if they were caught!  It was quarter to 6, not quite light…  

“Come on,” he said.  “Put your trousers on over your pyjamas.”

“If we take just three from each garden,” said Sophie, as they crept downstairs, “nobody will notice, will they, Daddy?”

“Happy Mummy’s Day, Mummy!” said Sophie, at breakfast-time.  She nudged Toby, who had been asleep until half an hour ago.  “Say Happy Mummy’s Day, Toby.”

“The flowers are lovely, darling,” said Tessa, kissing both children.  “Oh, Sophie, your slippers are wet.  But, never mind, we’ve got to get dressed and ready, because we’re having lunch with Granny today, aren’t we?”

Steve reached out for her hand over the breakfast table.  “No.  No.  I can't be bothered with it.  Mothering Sunday at the Kings Head and all that.”

“But your Mother…”

He winked.  “Sophie’s got wet feet.  She’s sure to get a cold.”  He picked up the phone.  “Wouldn’t want her to give it to Mother, would we?”