by John Clanchy
‘Home. Home now,’ Grandma Vera says, as we go into Gerontics’ surgery.
‘Soon. We’ll go home soon, Mother,’ Mum says, and as long as she keeps saying this, like two parrots in neighbouring trees, Grandma Vera will be all right. It’s only now, that we’re here at Gerontics’ place, that she’s not. Driving here she’s been fine, she’s been singing the same song over and over. This came back to her after her fall, and she sings it all the time now. Mum says it’s an old lullaby or love song, and Grandma Vera used to sing it to Mum when she was a girl, and I notice how tense it makes Mum in the car – her knuckles go white on the steering wheel she’s gripping it so hard – and I wonder what the song makes her remember.
Goodnight sweetheart,
Sleep will banish sorrow.
Goodnight sweetheart,
Till we meet tomorrow …
And that’s about as far as she gets, and starts all over again. ‘Goodnight sweetheart, Sleep will banish sorrow …’ And this can go on for hours, and once or twice even in the car I notice Mum’s lips moving, and I’m wondering if she’s like Philip and saying ‘For Christ’s sake, shut up,’ or if she’s actually singing along under her breath, and maybe not even noticing it herself. I don’t mind too much myself because Grandma Vera’s actually got a nice voice and after a while it’s like carols in the Mall at Christmas and you don’t notice it unless you happen to tune in for some reason.
Gerontics hasn’t changed at all. I bet he’s even wearing the same jacket and tie as the first time we saw him. Which is strange for a doctor because you’d think he’d have got blood and intestines and things on it by now. But he’s just as creepy and smarmy as ever and says, ‘Ah, the lovely Trent-Harcourt sisters’ to Mum and me, and I say, ‘My name’s Vassilopoulos actually,’ and he shakes his head and I see him sneak a look at the folder on his desk like he’s wondering if he’s got his patients in the wrong order or something, but he must have worked it out because he says, ‘And here’s Mum’ to Grandma Vera, and Mum goes, ‘It’s Mother actually, or Mrs Harcourt,’ and he says, ‘Quite,’ and I see him sighing when Mum says this, and I know he’s thinking, Oh, yes, I remember this lot. But he still can’t help fussing about chairs for Mum and me, and for a moment it’s crazy because he’s so busy pushing chairs against the backs of our lovely knees that he forgets all about poor Grandma Vera who’s standing around like a music stand after a concert or a missing lamp or something, and then begins to wander off. ‘Thank you,’ Grandma Vera says to Gerontics, ‘Home now,’ and he only just catches her at the door, and in the end it’s Mum who’s got to take over and get her into a chair while Gerontics goes back behind his desk and gets out a hanky and dabs at his forehead.
‘Wandering?’ he says, as he starts taking down notes from Mum. ‘Yes, well that’s …’
But he doesn’t finish or say what it is.
‘And the fall? How long would you say she was unconscious?’ ‘Home now,’ Grandma Vera says, but nobody’s listening to her any more, and she takes my hand.
In the end, after all these questions and Gerontics acting like he’s taking a dictation test or practising for a court reporter or something, Mum says, ‘Aren’t you going to arrange for some tests? Some scans, or something? See whether there was some sort of seizure?’
‘Mrs Harcourt-Trent …’ Gerontics says.
‘Trent-Harcourt,’ Mum says.
‘Miriam,’ he says, ‘I have to say to you that the last tests we did were very conclusive. Atrophy – shrinkage if you like – is very pronounced, as are manifestations of plaque, of lesions, thickened vessels, cysts … Now your mother almost certainly suffered some kind of further cerebral damage either before or after her fall the other day – I mean, she may just have fainted, it’s quite possible – but either way, don’t you see, there’s little point in doing more blood tests or imaging. We know what’s there, we know it’s irreversible, and that it’s progressing fairly rapidly. This may sound cruel – though it’s not meant to – but there’s not much more to find out. And given the stress that Mum –’
‘Mother,’ Mum says.
‘That Mrs Harcourt goes through in going into hospital, it’s simply in my judgement not worth it. If you insist, of course …’ ‘No, no,’ Mum says. ‘I accept all that. So, what are we to do?’ ‘Well, nothing,’ says Gerontics. ‘Nothing but care, care and more care – as it’s obvious you’re already giving her. Her reflexes are poorer, her general tonicity, but she’s not in pain or excessively anxious so far as I can see.’
‘Goodnight sweetheart, Grandma Vera sings, and Gerontics nods and smiles at her and goes on talking to Mum.
‘That’s all assuming, of course, that you are determined to continue with home care.’
‘Home now,’ Grandma Vera says. And starts.
‘In a moment, Mother,’ Mum says, and helps her back into her chair.
‘And these falls?’ she says to Gerontics. ‘What can we do about them?’
‘I don’t know,’ Gerontics says. ‘Apart from taking special care when she stands up after getting out of bed or out of a chair, clearing furniture from cluttering the rooms she normally spends most time in – just the obvious things. The bathroom especially. In a nursing home, you see, everything is purpose built for this, rails on the walls, special rubberized, non-slip floors in wet areas, soft furnishings only –’
‘Well, we don’t have those things,’ Mum says. A bit sharply, I think. ‘But I’ll do what I can.’
And as she says this, I can see the whole house being rearranged. Again. Rubber going down on the floors in Grandma Vera’s bathroom and laundry, all the stools and coffee tables going out to the garage, the piano upstairs, all the table edges being padded. Mum’s a demon like that once someone gives her a suggestion. Philip’s always walking in the door and saying, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I thought this was my own house,’ and going out again, then ringing the bell and when Katie goes to open it, standing on the front step with a flower that he’s just grabbed from the garden and saying, ‘Is this Royal North Shore Hospital? I’m looking for the woman in four-one-two.’
‘Home now,’ Grandma Vera says.
‘And behaviourally?’ Gerontics says. ‘Have you noticed much difference since the fall – when was it, last Friday? I can see she’s a lot stiffer physically, but that goes with the overall loss of tone. But behaviourally?’
‘She lives more and more in the past,’ Mum says. ‘Like this singing thing. Which comes from my childhood. It’s like one door’s popped open since the fall, and more and more of the ones in the present are being shut. And not only my childhood, but hers as well. The other day –’
‘Is that a bad thing – for her?’ Gerontics says. ‘Living in the past?’
And that’s the first sympathetic or smart thing I’ve heard Gerontics say, and I look at him with his frameless glasses, like he’s trying to be modern or something, and I think – well, he’s still smarmy and that – but if you look behind his glasses at his eyes, which are blue and actually quite friendly without being beautiful at all like Philip’s, that’s my Philip’s, and you see he’s listening to Mum like he really wants to know what she thinks, maybe he’s not so bad after all, maybe he’s even normal with kids and things of his own, but he just gets smarmy and can’t help it when he puts his doctor’s jacket on and remembers how big a room he’s got and everybody goes Yes, Doctor, No, Doctor all the time, and he believes it. Maybe it’s not even his fault, I think while he and Mum are talking. And, as we’re getting our things, there’s something I want to know this time, and I ask him. Mum looks a bit annoyed when she hears it, but he answers me quite seriously, like it was a really interesting question. Which it is, to me.
‘One grandparent, female line,’ he says to himself, looking at the ceiling and working it out, like he was giving a quote for a new drain. ‘One in twelve,’ he says to me. ‘Yes, about one in twelve.’
‘Or better,’ Mum says and smiles at him with a tight mouth.
‘Goodnight sweetheart, Grandma Vera sings to him, while he’s still working out what Mum’s on about. ‘Sleep will banish sorrow …’
Grandma Vera
We used to play school. She was clever, cunning. She watches all the time. It’s the rule, she’d say. She knew all the rules. Cats aren’t, cats aren’t – Not in here. It’s the rule. Emily! Stay, please stay. Don’t run, Emily! Don’t leave me! Please?
‘Mother?’
Emilyy –!
‘What are you looking for, Mother?’
That hurts, that hurts, you’re breaking my arm. No, I don’t want to, I don’t want to. Let me go, let me go – Please? Can I go now? I won’t say anything. I promise. Cross my heart, I promise.
‘Is there something in there you want, Mother? Something in the cupboards? Mother –?’
That’s Miriam, now. Miriam. She’s clever, Miriam. Cunning. She watches all the time.
‘Mother?’ she says again. ‘Were you looking for something? Something from the cupboards?’
‘Bloodbath,’ I say. You have to be cunning back with Miriam.
‘Jesus,’ she says quietly, so I won’t hear it. But I hear it.
‘She’s the only real friend I’ve got now,’ I say.
‘Now that’s simply not true, Mother. When she was here, you never liked her. In fact you drove her away. And anyway, you have a whole new set of friends now. You got along well with Hafize, didn’t you?’
‘Half these –?’
‘Hafize. The Turkish woman. With the head scarf, you remember?’
‘She was here before. I saw her.’
‘Yes, on Wednesday. She came to sit with you last Wednesday.’
‘She was in here. I saw her.’
‘In the cupboard? She was getting something from the cupboard?’
‘And Ruth Daley, with the ankles. She was a friend. You remember Ruth Daley?’
‘I’m not sure that I do, Mother …’ Miriam says. She’s pretending not to remember now.
‘With the ankles,’ I say.
‘You don’t mean old Mrs Daley? The woman who used to live next to us in Ryde? Is that the one? I don’t remember there was anything wrong with her ankles, though. I suppose I was too young to notice.’
Always thinking, Miriam. Always. Always had the answers.
‘All I remember,’ Miriam says, ‘is that when we lived there, you would never have anything to do with her. You always said her home was dirty, and Mrs Daley herself was a slattern …’ Miriam’s talking to herself again. When she says it’s what I do. ‘I used to think,’ she says, ‘that meant she was ethnic, a Russian or something. I could never work out why she was called Mrs Daley. Then one day I realized that, since she was married, it must have been Mr Daley who was a Slattern, and she became one when she married him. Like promising to bring your children up Catholic. Mrs Daley was a Catholic, wasn’t she? Mother –?’
‘I always had friends.’
‘Of course you did. You still do.’
‘There was a pagoda on the house, do you remember? Right across the front.’
‘A pergola, Mother. Yes, there was. But not on the old house, not at Ryde. It was on the new house at St Leonards, remember? With the jasmine climbing over it at one end, and the wisteria at the other? Dad planted it just after we went there.’
‘No –’
‘All right, all right, Mother. Maybe it wasn’t Dad at all. Maybe it was some other man. A gardener, or someone.’
‘Emily was my best friend.’
‘I don’t think I ever knew any Emily.’
‘She stole the doll, I’m sure. She hid it.’
‘Oh, now I see what you’re getting at. She hid the doll. Like in a cupboard?’
‘I never got it back. She came to play one afternoon, and after she went, the doll was missing.’
‘What was it like?’
‘It had one arm that was broken at the arm – it had been twisted till it broke – and I always had to dress it in long gloves or sleeves to the end thing – what’s the end thing?’ I ask Miriam.
‘Fingers?’
‘No, no –’
‘Hand? Wrist?’
‘To the wrist, wrist. What is to the wrist?’
‘The sleeve, Mother.’
‘Sleeve?’
‘On the doll.’
‘Where’s the doll?’
‘Is that what you’ve been looking for, Mother? In the cupboard? An old doll?’
She’s cunning, Miriam is. She watches, listens.
‘One of your old dolls?’ Miriam says.
‘Emily took it when she ran. She ran away from the man. I couldn’t.’
‘Well, whosever it was,’ Miriam says, ‘it’s not in these cupboards now, Mother.’ She says this, but she goes on pretending to look anyway.
‘He broke her arm, he tried to anyway, the man who was building the pagoda. He twisted it. Twisted. That hurts, that hurts, she cried, but he wouldn’t let her go. Emily got away. She ran. The man twisted the girl’s arm more, she had to swallow his pipe thing. Please? she said. Can I go now? I won’t say anything. I promise. Cross my heart, I promise. She always wore gloves after that, sleeves to the – What’s the end thing?’
‘Wrist, Mother.’
‘It’s broken.’
‘Broken or not, it’s simply not in here. I’m sure I’d know if it was. We didn’t bring any dolls when we moved you here.’
‘Bloodstock –’
‘Please don’t start this again, Mother. Mrs Johnson was just trying to help you. She wouldn’t have taken anything away from you.’
‘I sucked his pipe. He made me. Emily wouldn’t. She ran away.’
‘Whose pipe, Mother? Dad never smoked a pipe.’
‘Sucked it. It tasted –’
‘It couldn’t have been Dad’s. You’re thinking of someone else.’
‘Do I have any friends left at all?’
‘Oh, Mother, of course you do. There’s me for a start, and there’s Philip, and Laura and Katie …’
‘None?’
‘And now there’s all my students as well. They want to become your friends.’
‘None at all?’
‘You know what it’s like when people get old, Mother. Some of their friends get sick, some die, some move away with their families – like you’ve done. Some just get frightened and turn in on themselves.’
‘Emily got frightened. She ran away.’
‘Did she? I never knew her.’
‘Em’s my special friend. I love her. Love Em.’
‘Do you? Who knows, perhaps she’s even still here. In Sydney, I mean. Would you like me to try and find her for you, track her down?’
‘Oh, no, you mustn’t do that. It’s not allowed.’
‘Whatever you like.’
‘It’s against the rules.’
‘There are no rules against it, Mother. You’ve only got to say, and I’ll try.’
‘You mustn’t.’
‘Who is this Em, Mother?’
‘Em?’ I say. ‘I never said Em.’
‘Well, I think you did, Mother, but it doesn’t matter. Not if you don’t want me to try and find her.’
You see how careful you have to be with Miriam, how clever she is. Miriam always broke the rules. That was her trouble.
‘No,’ I tell her. ‘Thank you anyway. It’s too long ago now,’ I say. I can be cunning too. I’ll just wait till she’s gone, and then I’ll look again.
Miriam
‘I’m glad you’ve come back,’ Jane says.
This is only my second visit, but already I’ve come to love this room, its subdued colours, its greys and muted blues, its flashes of yellow, its stillness in a still house. I guess it’s that, its stillness – isn’t that what Eleni said she desired most of all, Stillness – esychia – even above Love?
‘Why?’ I say. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t come back?’
‘It’s always hard to tell, after a first visit,’ s
he says. ‘Counsellors get anxious too, you know. Like anyone else.’
‘You anxious? I don’t believe it.’
‘You don’t believe I’m anxious, or you don’t believe I’m human like everyone else?’
‘I just can’t imagine you as being anxious. What would someone like you ever get anxious about?’
‘Whether I’ve understood for a start. About what a client’s come for, I mean – let alone whether I’ve supplied it. The first session’s always a bit … You’re always feeling one another out, searching for a focus. You’d be amazed at the number of people who come for one session, and then never reappear.’
‘Really?’ I say. ‘I thought that was only in language teaching. People appear with us too, then disappear. You wonder whether it was you, or the course, or something else – and you’re nearly always wrong. You assume it’s you and then – if you do ever find out – it usually turns out to be something much simpler, something neither you nor they have any control over. Like the husband’s been shifted in his work, the family’s had to move interstate, or a child falls ill, or something … totally normal.’
‘That’s true,’ Jane says. ‘But unless you actually know, there’s always this tiny, nagging feeling of rejection.’
‘Yes,’ I say, with surprise. ‘But I still find it difficult to see you as anxious.’