Excerpt from Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'How long have you been tired?' I asked her, and she answered me as gravely as if I'd been a doctor.

'About five days.'

'Five days!' And I hadn't known.

'It will soon pass. I am giving a talk in the Meeting House next Friday.'

'On what subject?'

'On hereditary privilege,' said Mammie, fumbling for her spectacles on the table without looking at them. She helen dunmore 34 put them on. She was herself again, worn but eager. 'Well, my bird,' she said, 'now you're smiling. What an anxious face, when you came in.'

'I thought you were ill.' I sat down on the bed, and took her hands again. I felt as if I could never have enough of looking at her. 'Will you let me brush your hair?'

This time she let me. I took off her spectacles and brushed out her hair, all of it. It was still brown, although like her hands it was dry and not glossy any more. I thought she should rub a little almond oil into it, but she would never do that. I brushed and brushed until it had some shine, and then I plaited it so that it would be comfortable for her.

'There now,' I said. She smiled and then lay back with her eyes shut. I drew down the bed linen and slipped in beside her. I hugged her to me very gently, because I was afraid that she had a pain somewhere, and wasn't telling me. She was warm and she smelled of amber, from the scent given to her by a rich lady who had read her treatise on married women's property rights. If the gift had been lace she would never have worn it, but she couldn't resist any sweet- smelling thing. I put my face to the side of her neck and curled against her.

'Augustus will be back tomorrow,' she said. I made a sound against her neck. The Roman Emperor, home from making speeches about the rights of man.

'You must not do his work for him. You must rest,' I said. I thought of how Augustus would walk up and down the room, declaiming his next pamphlet, while my mother wrote it out in her swift, clear handwriting. And even then he would find fault. There were always things that needed to be changed, or rewritten.

'His eyes are bad,' she said. 'You know that.'

Yours will be bad too, if you write for him as well as for yourself, I thought.

'I'll come to see you tomorrow,' I said.

'There's no need, Lizzie. I'm perfectly well. Hannah shouldn't have alarmed you.'

I felt her words through her flesh and mine, as much as I heard them. 'I'll come tomorrow anyway,' I said. 'I'd like to hear how Augustus did on his travels.' She was still, and I thought perhaps she suspected my mockery, but then she said:

'I am glad you are more friendly to him now, Lizzie. He is a kind man, you know.'

'I know.' As well as all his other qualities: his ability to spew out endless pamphlets but not to write them in his own hand, his carelessness with his clothes which led to endless mending and darning, his sharing a bed with my mother in spite of his whiskery face and ginger breath, his foolishness with money which led to . . . But it had to be admitted, Augustus was kind.

'I could not love you any more, Mammie,' I said, 'if you were my own pet donkey,' and she laughed. That laugh of hers, so warm and sweet, mocking but joyous, as if she knew all the bad there was to know about the world but still loved it . . . Out of all the things I loved about her I think her laughter was what I loved the best. She laughed now because when I was six years old, when I'd longed and longed for a donkey to ride on, that had been my declaration of love for her.

'And how is your husband?' she asked.

Birdcage Walk © 2017 by Helen Dunmore. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved.