by Jason Ayres
There were two empty red wine bottles and a three-quarters finished bottle of Bacardi Spiced Rum on the table. It was perfectly possible she had drunk all of that just the previous day. That’s how bad things had got. Of my mother, there was no sign. She must be sleeping it off either in bed or on the sofa, where she frequently crashed out.
What was I going to do? What could I do? Hide all the booze? Tip it down the sink? That wouldn’t stop her and would just get me screamed at. It was way too late now, anyway.
Perhaps I could try and talk to her. I remember I had tried in the past without much success, but now I had advance knowledge of exactly was going to happen, maybe I could get through to her.
It was only just getting light outside, and just after 8am according the kitchen clock. Sweeping away some of the detritus littering the kitchen surfaces, I located the coffee machine and prepared to put together my morning fix. All that caffeine probably wasn’t doing me much good, but it was a lot less harmful than what was flowing through my mother’s veins.
Once the coffee pot was bubbling away, I got to grips with the business of clearing up the mess my mother had left the kitchen in. I had tackled the dishes and the takeaway boxes when I heard the telltale creak of her footsteps on the stairs. It was early, but then she had probably gone to bed early after she had drunk herself into a stupor, as she did most days.
I remembered my mother looking bad in her final days, but time had taken the edge off my memories of how bad a state she was really in.
She hobbled into the room in a baggy old T-shirt and jeans which were both way too big for her. This wasn’t surprising and she had been losing weight continually during that last year, possibly a symptom of the illness inside her.
The clothes looked dishevelled, and I strongly suspected she had not only been wearing them for several days, but had also slept in them. Also, even though I was several feet away from her as she entered the room I caught the unmistakeable whiff of alcohol.
The skin on her arms and face was dry, almost parchment-like, and there was a yellowish look around her eyes. This was not my mother – not the mother I had grown up with. This was a hollow husk of what she had once been.
Trying not to show any signs of the shock I felt at her appearance, I tried to put on a brave face.
“Morning, Mum,” I began. “I’ve got a pot of coffee on. Would you like some?”
“Amy, you know I can’t stand the stuff,” she replied, grumpily, as she made a beeline straight for the table, eyes set on the Bacardi bottle.
“How about some breakfast, then?” I suggested, already knowing what the answer would be.
“I’m not hungry,” she snapped, reaching for the bottle. I remembered that she rarely ate during the day, existing pretty much on takeaways at night in her later days.
I had to try and say something, even though I knew it would do no good.
“Mum, you really shouldn’t be drinking this early in the morning,” I began.
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do in my own home, Amy!” she retorted angrily.
She was always like this. Any suggestion that she should cut down on her drinking was met with hostility.
“I’m not, Mum, but think of what it’s doing to your health.”
She laughed a dark, gallows humour-type of laugh, exposing her rows of blackened, rotting teeth.
“Do you think I care?” she said. “What have I got that’s worth living for?”
“You’ve got me,” I replied.
“Yeah, when it suits,” she replied. “How long before you bugger off back to Australia or wherever?”
“I’m here for you, Mum,” I replied. “I want to help you.”
“It’s too late to help me,” she replied, resignedly. “You’d be better off out of it, living your own life.”
Sadly, I knew she was right, but I wasn’t giving up. Even if I couldn’t do anything today, maybe I could on my next trip. If I could just try and get her to open up, I might be able to discover something I could work with next time.
“Mum, why are you being like this? Is it because of what happened to Rachel?”
Immediately I knew I had said the wrong thing.
“Don’t you dare mention her name in this house!” she yelled, her jaundiced eyes blazing. “If she was here, she wouldn’t be giving me this grief. Rachel would have understood.”
The message was cloud and clear. Rachel was better than me. Rachel was her favourite, and it had been the wrong daughter who had died. That was what she was implying.
But I knew that simply wasn’t true. She had always treated us equally when Rachel had been alive. The only advantage my sister had over me now was that she wasn’t here and I was. Her death had raised her onto a pedestal in my mother’s eyes, at a level that I simply couldn’t attain whilst still alive.
“Mum, Rachel’s gone,” I said softly. “Please let me help you.” I reached for the bottle, but she snatched it away before I could get hold of it.
“Leave me alone!” she screamed as she removed the lid and upended the bottle into her mouth, glugging it down like there was no tomorrow.
“Mum, stop!” I shouted. I had never seen her drink out of the bottle like this before. Was this her response to my attempted intervention? To just drink even more to spite me? It seemed all I was doing was making things worse.
Suddenly she broke off from downing the rum with a sharp cry of pain. Attempting to place the bottle back on the table, she missed, and it fell to the floor, shattering on the earthenware kitchen tiles.
Bending almost double, her hand went to her right side, just beneath her ribcage as she yelped again in pain.
“Mum, what is it?” I cried, even though I already knew.
She looked up at me with a pleading in her eyes.
“Pain,” she said, gasping for breath. “Help me, Amy,” she cried.
Although this had happened before, I hadn’t expected it to be happening right now. I remember quite clearly that this had happened the following day, on my birthday. She had collapsed in pain just like now, and I had phoned an ambulance and she had been taken into hospital.
Why was it happening now, a day early? Had our row and her subsequent upending of the rum bottle triggered the pain early? Whatever the reason, I had no alternative but to follow the same course of action as before and phone for an ambulance.
A few hours later I was sitting by her hospital bed as she slept. I was in one of the very wards that I would soon be employed in.
I knew that soon a doctor would come round to give me the inevitable news that she had advanced liver cancer. Getting there a day early wasn’t going to make one iota of difference. She would never be going home again. From here, it would be a hospice which was where she would end her days.
I had known from the outset that there would be nothing I could do but at least I had confronted the problem with her and got some indication of how she was feeling. Now I could try again, in the past, when there might still be time to turn things around.
It would be three more years until I got another chance.
Chapter Fourteen
2007
I was back in my bedroom again, three years before my mother’s death, wondering if I would be able to get through to her this time.
I had not seen her since that awful day when I had ended up taking her to hospital because I had arrived abroad on both my next two trips back in time.
After I had finished my nursing degree, I had decided to work abroad with the Red Cross for a few years before I settled down to work at the hospital. They had been richly rewarding years – hard work, and harrowing at times, but without doubt they were the best years of my adult life.
On New Year’s Eve 2009 I found myself in Indonesia, helping out in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake. There had been a number of disasters in the Asia-Pacific region that year which had led to a strong Red Cross presence in the area. Before arriving in Sumatra, I had been giving aid i
n the Philippines which had experienced an extremely destructive typhoon.
I had been part of the team deployed to help out with the aid effort. Even though several weeks had passed since the earthquake by the time I arrived in Sumatra, the signs of devastation were everywhere.
My job included everything from dealing with the aid deliveries coming in from abroad, to helping the locals rebuild their shattered communities.
On New Year’s Eve I found myself in a small fishing village on the Sumatran coast where a Red Cross team was helping to build a new emergency centre to provide temporary shelter for families of the local fishermen.
This was intended not only for use in the current disaster, but also to be robust enough to withstand future earthquakes. It was being built on the highest land in the area, which also took into account the risk of associated tsunamis. After what had happened to Rachel, this was a project extremely close to my heart.
I spent the night in the village, celebrating New Year with the locals. Despite the recent disaster, all the villagers were determined to face 2010 with a renewed sense of optimism. Very few could speak English but this didn’t matter. We had a shared bond that transcended language. We sang, danced and partied all night around a large bonfire on the beach.
The next day, I travelled to the warehouse in Padang to continue work in co-ordinating the relief effort.
The following year I found myself in Australia. I wasn’t working there, but doing the obligatory backpacker thing, exploring the delights that this huge country had to offer.
This was the year after I had finished my degree when I was combining Red Cross work with travelling. I was in my early twenties at the time and remembered my trip to Australia fondly. The one thing that would have made it better was some more money as I was travelling on the absolute breadline, but I had planned to do something about that.
When I arrived on New Year’s Eve, I materialised on Bondi Beach, where I was lying on a towel soaking up the hot Southern Hemisphere sunshine. Just as when I had arrived in Indonesia, this was another welcome respite from the endless drudgery of freezing cold British December days I had been enduring for what seemed like forever.
One feature of being so far from home was that I arrived on these trips in the daytime. In Sumatra I had been in the middle of building work on the shelter and this time it was already early afternoon, hence the sunbathing. This was infinitely preferable to arriving at night when I would have found myself in the grotty hostel with several other people.
I had no intention of going back to the hostel tonight. I was getting pretty good at planning things in advance by now, and knowing I was going to be in Sydney on this date, I had made preparations to make my stay infinitely more comfortable than before.
One of the things I remembered about Australia was how popular horse racing was over there. Unlike in the UK, where alcohol and betting shops didn’t mix, here things were a lot more relaxed. It seemed many pubs had betting facilities on tap along with the beer.
Although horse racing had never been my thing, I had done my homework before the trip and now knew all about the TAB which stood for Totalisator Agency Board. This was the Australian equivalent of our British bookmakers and I was intending to win some tidy sums of money to help my New Year celebrations along a bit.
There were many things I had wanted to do in Sydney, but just hadn’t had the money. I was fresh out of college, with very little in the way of funds and had been doing casual jobs along the way to keep my trip going. All of that was about to change.
I had gleaned all I could about the Australian system from the internet. All of the results going back years were available in an archive online so I had memorised the results from a couple of the big meetings taking place on the day in question. Much as I was enjoying the feeling of the sun on Bondi Beach, it must already be around 2pm by my calculations, so I needed to get off the beach and into a local TAB office.
I had planned things carefully, and didn’t go crazy in the first place I visited. It was a bar with a betting shop tacked onto the side. There, I had A$20 on each of the first two winners and then moved on to another bar.
I didn’t want to attract too much attention, which wasn’t easy, even without backing winners. The punters in the bars were curious who this young English woman was backing horses. It’s fair to say, I didn’t fit the profile of the average punter.
Over the afternoon, I visited four or five TAB outlets, winning increasing amounts in each. By the end of the day I had well over A$2000 in brightly coloured notes. That would be enough to substantially upgrade my New Year celebrations.
I booked myself a proper hotel for two nights, which enabled me to rid myself of my backpack which I had been carrying around with me everywhere. Leaving it in the hostel wasn’t a good idea. After that I went on one of my regular shopping sprees to spruce myself up for the evening ahead.
Once I was scrubbed up and suitably attired, no longer looking like a grubby backpacker, I got myself down to the harbour. There I was lucky enough to find a cruise still taking bookings for the evening. I saw the New Year in in style, watching the fireworks over the Opera House after a gorgeous dinner on-board the boat.
The dining had been arranged at long tables with no formal seating plan, so I hadn’t looked obviously alone, and soon made the acquaintance of others along my table. Just as in New York, I ended up having a fantastic time, making me reflect once again that New Year wasn’t so bad if you were in the right place to enjoy it.
With plenty of money left, I went sightseeing the next day, doing the Sydney Harbour Bridge Walk, then dining at the Sydney Tower revolving restaurant. I must have eaten half my own body weight in there, taking the opportunity to try all sorts of exotic and local meats I hadn’t encountered before.
Both Indonesia and Australia had been once-in-a-lifetime experiences which I had now been fortunate enough to enjoy twice in mine. I definitely made more of both this second time around, leading me to wonder how much better all our lives could have been if we all been given a second bite of the cherry.
I had certainly been making good use of mine. Perhaps not to begin with, when I was still learning how this worked and making mistakes, but certainly since the wake-up call of what had happened to Gary. I had been having a lot fun but there was the ever-looming reality that time was running out like sand through an hourglass. I now had only a few years left as an adult.
Now it was the year before Australia and I was back at home, three years now before my mother’s death. Perhaps if I could stop her drinking now, it would be in time to save her.
I got up, got dressed and made my way downstairs. My room had looked the same as ever, but there were notable changes in the rest of the house since my last visit. The most obvious of these was that it was much cleaner and tidier. It was not a show home by any means, but far from the rank state it had been the last time I had been there. That meant she hadn’t totally given up yet. That gave me hope.
There was no sign of my mother, but some evidence she had been around this morning. There was an empty coffee cup and a small, crumb-covered plate and butter knife next to the sink. This was also an encouraging sign. At least she was still eating and drinking properly at this time and hadn’t yet reached the alcohol-for-breakfast stage.
Even so, there was evidence of the previous evening’s drinking. On the kitchen surface next to the sink was an empty wine glass and two empty wine bottles next to it. Whether or not she had drunk all of that the previous night, I had no idea, but I wouldn’t have put it past her. At least there were no spirits – or none that I could see, anyway.
I glanced across at the calendar, which showed that it was Monday, so she had probably gone to work. If I remembered rightly, she still had her job at this time but probably not for much longer. Around this time she had become so unreliable that the college had sacked her.
Losing her job had been the tipping point that had seen her descend into all-day drinking. At least
while she still had the job there was some structure to give her a semblance of normality. If I could stop her drinking before that happened, maybe there was still hope. I had two days to try and convince her.
But in order to do that, I first had to find her, and she proved to be remarkably elusive. I tried ringing and texting her mobile from my Nokia, but drew a blank there, too. I didn’t want to go out in case I missed her, so I stayed at home all day, assuming she would be home straight after work. Unfortunately that was not the case. I waited and waited until long after dark, but there was no sign.
I made good use of my time while I was waiting. I had come to the conclusion that a little future knowledge could come in very useful in my later trips, so I spent most of the day on the internet using the laughably slow laptop in my bedroom.
I went through every year from 1990 onwards, reading, writing down and memorising key facts about every year. Then I reread it again and again, hoping as much as possible would stick.
It was well into the evening by the time I finished and there was still no sign of her. What if she didn’t come back at all? It was New Year, after all – she may have gone straight out to a party after work. I tried to remember, but it was pointless – I couldn’t remember exactly what had happened in this particular year. It was a nondescript one, not like an Australia or a Sumatra which stuck in the mind.
Social media was no help either. I no longer had a smartphone – my Nokia having only the most basic of internet facilities. I did have Facebook on the laptop, but it was an extremely primitive-looking version and I had only recently joined. I had the grand total of seventeen friends and my mother was not one of them.
This backwards nature of technology was seriously beginning to irk me. Stuck at home for the evening, I decided I may as well stay in and watch the telly, but we didn’t even have a decent TV anymore, just this great big silver/grey box, on which the standard definition picture quality was seriously lacking by the standards I was used to.