Diary fragment · 3 min read ·
My Mother's Form Fills Itself
Between posting day and Friday, her weekly return arrives complete in her own round hand, every column true against the books but the till count, which keeps its own small sum.
- dated: "the form weeks"
- narrator: "Ivy Sarson, dispenser"
Tuesday 3rd. The shop week runs Tuesday to Saturday, Mum on the till and the weekly return, me on the leads and the labels and the lotions. Since her hands went weak in the spring I have written her columns for her, and she keeps the till, and I post Form 22 up Fridays from the box by the chemist's, per standing order, the district being fond of its Fridays. Tonight I went to the drawer for a fresh blank and the blank was not there. The second one gone this fortnight. I said nothing about it, because she was pleased with the week and pleased is not a thing to interrupt for a missing form.
Thursday 5th. Found it. On the dresser under her folded glasses, ruled and complete, her round hand, the hand from before the weakness came into it. Hours 26½. Items 88. Patients 61. Till count, £4.06. She was kind about it: you must have drafted one yourself and forgot, love, you are always ahead of the week. I had not. I went down after supper and counted the till against the ledger, to have something firm to stand in a doorway with. The till held £4.39.
Saturday 7th. I sat with the books after lock-up and audited her Thursday properly. Hours true against the rota. Items true against the counterfoils, every one accounted. Patients true against the shop cards in the wire tray, no card missing, no card extra. Three columns correct to the figure, all three correct for a week that was not closed when somebody filled them in on the Thursday — for a week that was not even Wednesday yet, when the drawer lost its blank.
Thursday 12th. The fortnight's second form, same in every particular but the sum. Hours right by Friday. Items right by Friday. Patients right. The till column short again, and short again by thirty-three pence, and this morning, sweeping behind the counter, I found the thirty-three pence in the charity tin by the door: coppers, warm as if they had just been counted out of a warm hand, sitting on top like a tip left for the house. Mum says the tin does that sometimes. Mum has stopped saying anything else about it, and her face when she says the first part is her face for weather.
So here is the shape of it, written down in this book only, where the ledger cannot scold me: here is what I cannot leave alone. The form is in her hand. The figures are true, and they come true, between a Tuesday and a Friday, as if the week had been seen to from the far side first. The till lends us the same three-and-thirty pence every week, off its own count, in change nobody pays. If the week can be right by Thursday, whose Thursday is doing the rightness — and between three and the half hour, when the shop is bolted and she is asleep upstairs, whose hand is hers, and what is it counting?