'What a Lovely Surprise'
by Penelope Mortimer author of Persephone Book No. 77

Paul Lawrence came back from work early. Jill lost count of the pile of shirts she was checking and impatiently started again, cramming each shirt into the laundry basket and muttering: ‘One … two … three … four …’ By the time she had captured them all and written them down in the book, he had shouted for the children and, after a great deal of rustling and whispering, they had shut themselves in the sitting-room.

With desperate speed, she began to count sheets. Louisa, their twelve-year-old daughter,came two steps at a time up the stairs, stopped short on the landing and said furiously, ‘Oh. There you are. Can’t you move?’

‘But I’m in the middle of doing the laundry.’

‘Well, we’ve got to bring something upstairs. Can’t you just go away for a minute?’

Jill dropped her armful of sheets; she had already forgotten how many there were. ‘All right,’ she said, trying to look pleased. ‘I suppose so.’

She went and sat on her bed. She was tired, and there was nothing to do in the bedroom so she just sat on the bed and waited. In a few moments she heard them coming up the stairs, the crackle of new, stiff brown paper, her husband swearing as he stumbled over the laundry basket.

‘Where shall we put them?’

‘Up in the attic, stupid.’

‘Won’t she go up to the attic?’

‘Of course she won’t.’

‘Well how do you know she won’t?’

‘Oh, do be quiet…’

They creaked on up the stairs. She gave them another couple of minutes, then crept out of the bedroom and began counting tin sheets again.

Paul came down from the attic hitting the dust off his suit and looking exhausted.

‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘I should have thought it was obvious,’ she said, writing down six sheets.

‘Isn’t it rather a peculiar time to be doing the laundry?’

‘Well, it goes tomorrow.’

‘Oh. I see.’

He realised, of course, that she couldn’t do the laundry tomorrow. He sat down heavily on the stairs, watching her.

‘There’s an awful lot of it,’ he said gloomily. ‘Couldn’t we cut down on it a bit?’

She realised that he had spent too much money today and was regretting it. She scooped up three pairs of his pyjamas and pushed them into the corners of the basket.

‘If you’d wear dripdry shirts,’ she said, ‘like everyone else.’

‘But I loathe all that nylon and terylene and stuff.’

‘Well, then. Eight shirts at one and sevenpence each. Pyjamas are one and ten. No one else sends any clothes to the laundry. Why don’t you buy a washing machine?’ At last she had the whole lot battened down. She straightened herself, pushing the hair out of her eyes. ‘You could have bought me one for my birthday, come to think of it.’

He was alarmed. ‘Really? Would you have liked a washing machine? I didn’t think of it.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t.’

‘I could have got one on hire purchase,’ he insisted. ‘But I didn’t think of it.’

‘But I don’t want one!’ she said, smiling desperately.

‘Then why did you say – ?’ 

The children came out of the attic and peered down over the banisters. ‘Are you going to stay there all night?’ Louisa asked. ‘We want to bring something down.’

‘All right,’ Jill said, dragging the laundry basket across the landing and bumping it down the stairs. ‘I’m just going.’

She had prepared, as far as possible, for tomorrow. Her birthday cake, with one deceitful candle, was ready in the larder; she had washed the kitchen floor and bought groceries for two days and checked that the tin opener and the corkscrew were both in the drawer. She took a pile of mending and sat down on the window-seat in the sitting-room. The sun was misty, the small, narrow gardens littered with disorderly September flowers, leaning stacks of Michaelmas daisies, chrysanth-emums like spilled copper, Aaron’s rod and seedy willowherb, slovenly splashes of dahlia against the grey brick walls. Somewhere somebody was already burning leaves. The clock in the hall chimed and struck the hour.

As she counted the strokes, one hand gloved in her husband’s sock, she was momentarily caught by a sharp, composite memory of all her birthdays. She could actually feel anticipation, even pleasure, flash through her, as though tomorrow really contained a mystery; as though she might unwrap something – a doll, the shrouded bulk of a new bicycle – which would really be a surprise, an astonishing happiness. It had left her before the clock had finished striking. If only, she thought, stabbing the hard heel of the sock with the needle, it was all over.

‘We want the scissors,’ Jane announced, bursting through the door. Her round, seven-year-old face was stern. ‘We are very busy.’

‘Bring them back,’ Jill said. ‘And be careful.’

The door slammed, the child pounded upstairs. Two minutes later she was back again.

‘Where’s the string?’

‘I don’t think,’ Jill said brightly, ‘we’ve got any string.’

Dismay threatened. ‘What shall we do, then?’

Jill pulled her hand out of the sock, lifted the pile of mending off her knee and began to look for the string. She groped in the back of shelves, hunted through the drawer of the desk which contained bits of sealing-wax,dried-up bottles of marking ink, three or four unidentified keys, two pipes, various bits of broken china, an old toothbrush and some lighter flints, but no string. Jane sat down patiently and looked at a magazine. Jill looked systematically through the broom cupboard and kitchen drawers and produced at last a roll of green garden twine and six yards of new pink ribbon intended for reviving someone’s party dress. ‘You’ll have to manage with this,’ she said.

Jane looked at it critically. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’ll do.’

She went off, and Jill sat down again, lifting back the mending. She decided not to bother with the sock, but to do something restful, like changing all the buttons on Louisa’s overcoat. They hadn’t brought back the scissors, so she gnawed and pulled at the buttons for a while and then gave up, folding the overcoat neatly over the back of the chair and waiting.

Becky, the middle one, was the next to come down. She put her sharp little face, weighted with horn-rimmed glasses and topped with a scrub of chopped red hair, round the door and asked, ‘Daddy says, where’s the glue?’

‘There might be some in the cupboard.’

Becky was ten and had just finished a two-year-long impersonation of Roy Rogers. The change had been sudden and extreme. The checked shirt, the patched jeans, the stringy neck scarf were still in a heap on her bedroom floor. She now wore one of Louisa’s petticoats trailing its grubby frill two inches below a velvet skirt she had salvaged from the dressingup box. She also wore ballet pumps and a large broderie Anglaise blouse which Jill remembered putting away to give, in another three or four years’ time, to Louisa. Round her neck, instead of the scarf, she wore a broken necklace of plastic beads, cunningly mended with fuse wire. She looked as though she had just been converted by a visiting missionary.

‘Becky –’ Jill began.

‘Yes?’ The huge spectacles, which the child had mistakenly been allowed to choose for herself, flashed innocently.

‘Oh,nothing. It should be in the bottom shelf.’

‘I’ve got it. By the way, how old will you be tomorrow?’

‘A hundred and ninety-five.’

‘No. Really.’
‘Thirty-nine.’ But she couldn’t help adding, ‘I think.’

‘Gosh. Daddy didn’t know.’ She wandered to the door. ‘I asked him,’ she explained. ‘He said oh, about thirty-five or something.’

Jill smiled. Her face was already beginning to ache a little.

‘We need to know, you see, for the play.’

‘Do you mean to say there’s going to be a play?’ There was always a play. It took up, mercifully in some ways, most of the afternoon. ‘Really?’ she asked incredulously.

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you. Oh dear.’

‘It’s all right. I’ll just pretend I don’t know.’

In a little while her husband came down.

‘Well,’ he asked in a distraught way, ‘and how’s the birthday girl?’

She looked at him imploringly. She had the absurd idea that she could ask him to aban-don the whole thing.

‘The children are working so hard,’ he said.

‘How sweet of them.’ She smiled quickly.

‘Looking forward to your day off?’

‘Oh yes. Of course I am.’

‘That’s good.’

He settled himself in an armchair and closed his eyes. The expression on his face was that of a man doggedly resting before a battle that might well be his last.

Next morning she woke, opened her eyes, took in the grey square of window and the sound of rain, snapped her eyes shut again. Thirty-nine, she thought.It didn’t mean anything. She was relieved and, turning cautiously over, settled to sleep again. In five minutes the alarm began to ring. Her husband had, of course, taken the day off. However, being her birthday, the alarm rang half an hour earlier than usual. He groaned and humped about the bed a little, then got up. She heard him putting on his dressing-gown and shuffling out of the room.

‘Honestly,’ she heard before the door closed, ‘we’ve been up for hours…’

She got quickly out of bed and brushed her hair, peering at herself in the damp mirror with the superstitious feeling that overnight her hair should have gone grey, the wrinkles multiplied. However, she looked much the same, except for the anxious smile that already seemed to be driven into her face. She shut the window and switched on the fire, then got back into bed and folded her hands calmly over her stomach. The great thing, she told herself, is to relax. Just relax, and it may all be quite painless.

The door opened and the three clear, sturdy voices struck up:
‘Happy Birthday to you,
‘Happy Birthday to you,
‘Happy Birthday’ – Paul joined in rather haphazardly – ‘dear Mother,’
‘Happy Birthday to you!
’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘What a lovely surprise.’
They filed in, business-like,serious, dumped their packages on the bed, kissed her and stood back. Paul followed with the tea-tray and kissed her and wished her a happy birthday.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where to start.’

They glanced at each other and giggled shortly. She began untying the pink ribbon.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘what a beautiful card! Did you make it, Becky?’
Becky nodded. ‘I made up the poem too.’

‘Let’s read it, then.

    “Thirty-nine is not such a
       very great age to be
    Think how you’d feel if today
       you were ninety-three.”’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘Well,’ Jill said, ‘I think it’s perfectly lovely. And a blotter, too! Just what I wanted. Thank you, darling.’ She kissed Becky, who blushed almost purple.

‘Open mine now,’ Jane said.

‘But it’s a needle case! And you made it all by yourself! Thank you, darling.’

While Jill was kissing Jane, Louisa, who thought her youngest sister a frightful show-off, looked distantly out of the window. ‘Now,’ Jill said, ‘whatever can this be?’ She unwrapped, with caution, two quilted coat-hangers. ‘Oh! she breathed. ‘And another poem!’

‘It’s not much good,’ Louisa muttered.

‘I’m sure it’s brilliant.

“You’re Thirty-nine today,
 So Happy Birthday, Mum. 
    You may feel rather old, 
    But to us you’re still 
        twenty-one!”’

Paul choked over his tea. The tray nearly upset and, helped by this distraction, Jill kissed Louisa warmly. The worst was over.

The remaining presents were from Paul. The sweater, a size bigger than last year’s, would be quite possible if she took the collar off and had it dyed. She said it was lovely, and the perfume was lovely and the Braque print – she nervously turned it the right way up – was really lovely.

‘I think it’s perfectly ghastly,’ Louisa said.

‘Oh well,’ Jill was amazed to hear herself saying, ‘we can’t all have the same tastes, can we? And it’s awfully cheerful.’ She kissed her husband gratefully. ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ she said. ‘Such wonderful presents.’

Something was wrong, her tone of voice or what she said: there ought to be more. They waited, and she kept smiling, and at last Paul said, ‘Well, you’d all better go off and get dressed or something. I’ll go down and get breakfast.’

‘I really don’t want any,’ Jill said. ‘Please don’t –’

‘But you always have breakfast in bed on your birthday!’ Louisa blazed. ‘You always do!’

‘Oh well, then. All right. Thank you,’ she said humbly.

Left alone, she wound up all the pink ribbon which, if ironed, might still do for the party dress. She folded the wrapping paper and arranged the cards on the mantelpiece and got back into bed. A faint smell of burning crept up from the kitchen. How wonderful, it is, she told herself sharply, to be loved.

The rule of her birthday was that she was not allowed to do anything. This had started when Louisa was about four. It had impressed Louisa, if no one else, as a wonderful idea and she had never allowed it to be forgotten. She was a highly organised child, very good at giving orders. Combined with remarkable beauty this made her, at twelve, rather formidable.

Unhappily dressed in the new sweater, Jill sidled downstairs at about ten o’clock. Louisa was vacuuming the sitting room.

‘Why didn’t you stay in bed?’ she asked. ‘And rest?’

‘Oh well . . .’ Jill said.

‘It’s a pity, because if it was a nice day you could sit in the garden.’

‘Yes,’ Jill said.

‘Well, do you mind moving, because I want to Hoover over there?’

Jill went back to the bedroom and did her nails. When they were dry she thought of tidying her drawers and this reminded her that she had, for weeks, been meaning to move the chest of drawers over to the other side of the room where it would not only look better but hide a small patch of damp on the wall. She resolutely put this idea out of her head and went downstairs again. Louisa was dusting, Becky finishing the washing up. They both seemed disappointed to see her so she went and stood in the dining-room for a little while,looking with interest at the rain, until Jane burst in and said, ‘Oh. You’re here. We’re going to lay the table now.’

‘But it’s not nearly lunch time!’

‘Well, that’s what Louisa told mc to do. Couldn’t you,’ she suggested sympathetically, ‘go for a walk or something?’

Jill went upstairs again and looked at the chest of drawers. She closed the door and cautiously pulled out the drawers, balancing them on the bed. Then she pulled the heavy chest care-fully, inch by inch, across the room. One of its feet got caught in the carpet, so she lay down on her stomach, lifting up the chest with one hand while niftily tucking the carpet down under its foot with the other. She was lying half under the bed and had just got the carpet straightened out when Louisa came in.

‘I brought you some coffee,’ Louisa said, and then, ‘Oh! What are you doing?’

Jill got up and took the cup without looking at her. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I was just moving the chest of drawers.’

‘But why?’ Louisa wailed. ‘On your birthday?’

‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ Jill snapped. ‘Why shouldn’t I move the chest of drawers on my birthday if I want to?’

‘But you’re meant to be resting?’

‘But I don’t want to rest!’

They glared at each other and slowly, painfully, Louisa’s eyes filled with tears. Jill held out her hands, but the child turned her head away and ran down the stairs. Nobody, Jill remembered hopelessly, cried on her birthday. She knelt down and heaved savagely at the chest, upsetting the cup of coffee which poured, a scalding christening, over her new sweater.

‘Louisa’s thoroughly upset,’ Paul said from the doorway. ‘I do think you might – What on earth are you doing?’

‘I’m trying,’ she said, getting up slowly, ‘to move the chest of drawers. It isn’t a crime. It isn’t hurting anybody. It isn’t spoiling anyone’s fun.’

‘Look at that sweater.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s ruined. When I think what it cost –’

‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘I can always have it dyed.’

‘Why can’t you rise to the occasion a bit? You’ve thoroughly upset Louisa.’

‘Is it Louisa’s birthday,’ she snapped suddenly, ‘or mine?’

‘Everyone’s trying their damnedest to please you.’

‘Oh, really. If that’s your attitude.’

‘Good God, if you can’t appreciate it, I’m sorry.’

‘Oh. . .’ She hung her head, watching the pale grey coffee dripping on to the carpet. ‘Of course I appreciate it, Paul.’

‘Well, then. Now where do you want this chest of drawers?’

‘Over there,’ she said humbly.

He picked it up, carried it across the room and dumped it against the wall.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘why don’t you go downstairs and look at a magazine or something?’

‘All right.’ It struck her that they were behaving in the most curious way. He looked shifty and sick and it suddenly occurred to her that he really hated her birthday, hated her growing older. That, in fact, he was ashamed. She was certain of it. He was ashamed because he could no longer avoid knowing that she was middle-aged.

‘Paul –’ she began.

‘Well?’ He had his back to her, pushing in the drawers.

She couldn’t think what to say. ‘Do you love me?’

‘Of course. You might just have a word with Louisa. She tries hard on your birthday.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘You all do.’

‘Well, then. I’ll go and get the lunch. You just relax. You know – relax a bit.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All right.’

He went heavily downstairs. She sat down on the bed and began pulling the fluff off the blanket, rolling it between her finger and thumb.

The play, this year, concerned two princes captured by a wicked wizard and saved in the nick of time by a benevolent fairy aged thirty-nine. Last year it had been two princesses captured by a wicked witch and saved in the nick of time by a benevolent fairy aged thirty-eight. Jane and Becky played the princes and Louisa doubled for the other parts. It was full of ‘Oho!’ and ‘By my troth!’ and ‘Whither away?’ After each scene Jane applauded loudly and was scolded by Louisa. In the interval, while Louisa was bringing up the birthday cake and ice-cream, Jane and Becky danced to a long- playing record of Sidney Bechet. As time wore on their faces became grimmer and their breathing louder, but they continued to lollop bravely about and never moved their eyes from the audience, which kept smiles of appreciation clamped firmly on both their faces. At last the record ended, Jill cut the cake and remembered to wish.

‘What did you wish?’ Jane asked.

‘Don’t be silly. She can’t tell. Come on, we’ve got to do the second scene now.’

They hurried busily away.

‘It’s a lovely play,’ Jill said timidly. ‘Are you all right?’

Her husband nodded. He was absolutely exhausted and had put down four dry martinis before lunch in order to nerve himself for the washing up. Jill had changed into a dress and made up her face with great care. In spite of this, she had begun to feel slightly hysterical. It was not surely necessary for the fairy to grow so old?
‘Gadzooks!’ Louisa cried, looking evil, ‘those princes will make me a jolly fine supper...’

At the end of the play the entire cast sang God Save The Queen and Happy Birthday To You. Then the curtains were drawn back and Jane inexplicably burst into tears. Becky, too, hung about looking moistly through her enormous glasses.
‘They’re tired,’ Jill muttered, patting them hopelessly, ‘I’ll put them to bed.’

‘You can’t,’ Louisa said, looking disgusted under her benevolent fairy’s crown. ‘It’s your birthday. You’re going out. I’ll put them, if they’re such babies.’

‘But I’m sure there’s time –’

‘You wouldn’t want Mummy to bath you, would you? On her birthday?’

Dumb, guilty, swamped in tears, Jane shook her head.

‘Then come on.’ A tinsel and muslin wardress, she pushed them out of the room.
 
‘And if you’re good,’ Jill heard her saying, ‘you can watch television for half an hour but, mind you, not a minute longer.’ Their voices, like the voices of tired, nattering old women, retreated up the stairs.

Jill tidied the sitting-room and poured herself a drink. The day weighed heavily on her, like some expensive mistake, a lapse of good taste which, once paid for, is irrevocable. The bonfire had been extinguished by the day’s rain. Some of the leaves on the laburnum had turned yellow overnight, but this was the only sign of autumn. The air had become clear and watery as spring and birds were twittering and fussing in the tall, grimy trees. The year, yesterday so mellow, had become petrified in a grey, damp evening.

‘Well, shall we go?’

She turned reluctantly. Paul had changed his suit, but not his expression. He went straight over to the decanter and poured himself a triple whisky.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘When you’re ready.’

‘I’m ready now.’

‘All right, then. Let’s go.’

‘Well, what do you mean, when I’m ready.’

‘Nothing. Where are we going?’

‘Where do we always go on your birthday? Pierre’s, of course.’

‘How silly of me,’ she said. ‘I should have known.’

They came home, rather unsteadily and in silence, about eleven. The children were all asleep. The house felt surprisingly normal, freed from tension. There was even a banana skin in the sitting-room grate which Louisa hadn’t tidied away. They climbed slowly upstairs, not speaking, yawned and sighed in the cold bedroom. It’s over, they both thought, pulling off their shoes. Weariness, apathy, drowned them. They moved about the room as languidly and pointlessly as fish in a small tank. When, at last, she had turned down the coverlet, put his pyjamas ready on the pillow, opened the window, turned off the main light, he was still standing in his shirt looking vaguely about the room. She had already forgotten about her birthday. Her face, after an enormous yawn, settled back lax and unsmiling.

‘Do hurry,’ she said. ‘I’m dropping.’

He picked up his pyjamas, looked at them with distaste and let them fall in a heap on the floor. Then he wandered to the cupboard, took out a clean pair of pyjamas and began, with laborious concentration, to undo the buttons.

In one movement she sat upright. Her whole body was stiff and trembling. ‘You can’t,’ she said, ‘wear clean pyjamas.’

He lowered towards her, his head stuck forward. ‘Why not?’

‘You had clean pyjamas last night.’

‘And is there any reason,’ he inquired, skidding a little over the words, ‘why I shouldn’t have clean pyjamas tonight as well?’

‘Of course there is!’ She was desolate, outraged. ‘We can’t afford the laundry! You said so yourself! We can’t afford the laundry!’

At last he let fly. ‘Then why don’t you wash them yourself instead of fooling around all day moving the furniture?’

‘Why should I wash your horrible pyjamas? Why should I?’

‘Don’t shout,’ he said. ‘I cannot stand you shouting.’

‘Why shouldn’t I shout?’

‘Because,’ he said, ‘you are too old.’

They stared at each other. All sound, even the sound of breathing, had stopped. He went out of the room, carrying the clean pyjamas. He went downstairs. She heard the sitting-room door close.

He had drunk too much, of course. It had been a strain. She had only been trying to save him the expense of the laundry. He was overtired. He would soon come back and apologise. She turned off the bedside light and lay on her back, staring at the patterns of the street lamp on the ceiling. The clock chimed and began to strike midnight. Next year, she realised, I shall be forty. She lay waiting, the little smile of gratitude fixed on her face, a distant welcome.

Published in The New Yorker 30 November 1957 and in Saturday Lunch with the Brownings and other Stories (1960)
© The Estate of Penelope Mortimer