by Elaine Chong
When the train stops at Shenfield, I’m quick to disembark. A brief glance up and down the high street when I emerge from the station soon establishes that it hasn’t really changed and is the same, unremarkable, small town that I left more than thirty years ago.
A taxi takes me on the short journey to Hillcrest House. The driver attempts to make polite conversation and I confide that I’m returning to a home I haven’t lived in for a long time. He asks me if I’ve missed ‘the old place’ and I tell him, truthfully, that I haven’t missed it for a single second.
As soon as I get out of the car, I see what Richard tried to explain to me about the state of the garden: it looks quite neglected. The trees, which grow along the side of the house, are shedding their leaves and clearly no one is sweeping them up. I don’t know very much about trees, but I do know that leaves on the ground rot if you don’t remove them. Over the winter, these leaves are going to decay and form a layer of black slime, which isn’t going to improve the saleability of the property, so someone is going to have to do something about it.
Last night I remembered to ask Richard to give me a key, but when I search my bag for it, I find I’ve left it back the hotel. Thankfully I’m saved from being locked out of my own house by the appearance at the front door of a woman whom I take to be Maggie.
“You must be Julia,” she says, and backs into the hallway.
At first glance, she seems to be a person of pensionable years, but I think the green, flowered housecoat she’s wearing over her clothes has influenced my estimation of her age. On closer inspection I can see she’s probably not very much older than me. She reminds me of Agnes Bagshot. She has the same shy smile, same dark brown hair and bright, blue eyes. When she was a girl, she must have been what my father often referred to as a ‘true beauty’. Richard and I both inherited our mother’s blonde hair and hazel eyes.
As soon as I step inside the house, I’m filled with a feeling of homesickness. I miss Singapore. I don’t want to be here, and I remember why I was happy to leave.
Richard
After Julia left us yesterday evening, Silvio made strong, black coffee. He said we needed to talk. Having just listened to my sister’s story of unhappiness and betrayal, I sobered up pretty quickly, but it was my mother that he wanted to discuss.
“You must settle this problem velocemente, Ricardo,” he told me. “Julia is not a bad person, but I know women like this. All she thinks about is me, me, me. As soon as she is absolutely certain that the house Hillcrest can never belong to her, she will leave, go back to Singapore.” He sighed. “Probably she will go back to her poor husband and still see her lover.”
“I know you’re right – about everything,” I told him. “But doing something in a hurry isn’t possible. I’m as certain as I can be that the house doesn’t belong to my mother, so selling it to fund her care isn’t going to happen. We’re going to have to consider other options.”
“You have options?”
“Maybe.” I hadn’t told Silvio or anyone else about the bungalow because I wanted to discuss it with my mother first – I still couldn’t understand why it was standing empty and unused when it could be lived in or generating an income for her. I had, however, considered something else. “I’ve been thinking about the possibility of letting Hillcrest, but I don’t know if that’s allowed under the terms of the will,” I said.
Silvio responded with a surprised and happy smile. “Fantastico! You don’t sell it, but you get the money for her.”
I nodded agreement. “She could rent a flat in supported living accommodation. It’s probably not quite what she wants after living in a four-bedroomed detached house for the last forty years, but she might not have a choice, if she can’t look after herself anymore.”
Silvio’s happy smile instantly dissolved. “I think maybe it’s too much to ask of her.”
I knew he was right – that it was a lot to ask of her – but I couldn’t see any other alternative.
When he leaves me at Bocca Felice the following morning, he reminds me that I need to contact my mother’s solicitor. That’s going to necessitate a drive back to the house we share in East Finchley because our bedroom in the flat over the restaurant only holds the basic essentials – some casual, weekend clothes and a few toiletries – and I’m going to need access to my computer.
I quickly throw on my clothes from yesterday evening because I want to get on the road, but I’m forced to take a more leisurely drive because of the traffic.
Back at home, as soon as I’ve showered and changed, I first phone the hospital to check on my mother’s progress. I’m told she’s with the physiotherapist and I can call later for an update after the doctor has made his rounds: all being well, she’ll be discharged by the end of the week.
“The end of the week?” I know I sound surprised, and not in a good way.
“That’s right, Mr Oakley. The physiotherapist is going to get her walking to the toilet with a frame. I understand her bathroom at home is on the first floor?”
“Uh, yes, I suppose it is. Is that a problem?” I say, and I try to suppress the note of hope in my voice.
“Well, it just means he has to get her walking safely up and down stairs.”
“Oh, I see. I suppose that could take a while then?”
“Not usually. If she can manage to walk comfortably with the frame today and tomorrow, then they’ll be tackling the stairs the next day. You’d be surprised how well people manage after an operation like this.”
I don’t want to be surprised. I need my mother to remain in the care of people, who know how to look after her, so I decide to mention my worries about her mental state.
The nurse responds immediately with, “Just let me read through her notes. I wasn’t aware there was a problem?”
“I think there might be,” I say. “One of your colleagues spoke to me about the possibility of her having dementia.”
“I’ll have to call you back about that, Mr Oakley.” I tell her that’s fine, but then she adds, almost as an afterthought, “Your wife didn’t mention this when I spoke to her this morning.”
“My wife?”
“Mrs Oakley.”
“There must be some mistake,” I say.
“Let me check the board,” she says at once. “I know Oakley isn’t a common name, but we might have two patients with that name.” And it takes her no more than a few minutes to get back to me and confirm that there’s only one patient called Oakley currently on the ward. “She’s phoned almost every day to check on your mother, Mr Oakley. I spoke to her myself this morning. She said her name was Sarah Oakley. I told your mother that she’s been asking after her and she seemed to recognise the name.”
There are several things wrong with this scenario. The most obvious is that I’m no longer married to Sarah – we’ve been divorced for almost twenty years. The second thing is that Sarah is working in New York so this morning in Essex would have been the middle of the night where my ex-wife now lives with her new husband and teenage daughter. More worrying, however, is that Sarah never called herself Oakley: she always used her maiden name – Hollingsworth – in both her private and professional life. Whoever has been calling the hospital isn’t the person I was once married to.
I can’t decide if I should explain this to the nurse. I’m not sure she’d believe me and then I might be labelled the person with the mental health issues. Instead, I tell her it must be Sarah, who used to be my wife. She seems to accept this explanation readily enough, but I’m intrigued to know who’s been masquerading as the current Mrs Oakley, and why.
The phone call to the solicitor takes less time. He’s out of the office and won’t be back till tomorrow according to his secretary, but she assures me that he’ll be able to see me promptly as he has few appointments timetabled for this week. I realise that Julia will want to attend any meeting I arrange, so I leave a message for him that we want to discuss the provisions of our father’s will, in particular the
arrangements for our mother and the property he owned, and she still lives in.
With too many unanswered questions buzzing around inside my head, I leave the house and head for the office, but before I leave, I email Sarah in New York. It’s a short message asking after her and her family, and then enquiring if she’s heard about my mother’s fall, and has she phoned the hospital. God knows what she’ll make of it, but she’s a stickler for answering emails promptly so with luck I’ll have an answer before the end of the day.
Lenora
You know you’re being treated like a child when you’re offered cake as a reward.
The physiotherapy midget’s partner in crime – a young man calling himself Frankie – arrived at my bedside this morning with a large slice of Battenberg on a paper plate. It looked disgusting: bright pink and yellow sponge cake covered in something that was supposed to be marzipan. It positively reeked of almond essence, but I had grave doubts whether anything growing on a tree had contributed to its manufacture.
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“It’s cake,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
He looked at the piece of Battenberg then looked back at me. “I thought you might like to have this with your elevenses, Lenora. You know ... a nice cup of tea and something sweet ... but obviously only after you’ve had a go with the walking frame.” He made a half-hearted attempt at a friendly smile and placed the cake on the table in front of me.
I was immediately seized with the urge to pick up the cake with my fingers and throw it across the room, but realised at once that that kind of behaviour – albeit very satisfying – would only confirm their opinion that I needed to be dealt with like a naughty child, so I put the temper tantrum on hold. I said, “If you want me to use the walking frame, you only have to ask.”
The faked friendly smile disappeared. “I think we already tried that, Lenora, but you weren’t very cooperative.”
“You seriously thought cake was the answer?” I asked him. The mouth didn’t move, but I saw a glint of appreciative humour in his eyes. “I’ll get out of bed,” I said, “but only after you’ve removed this corruption.”
He went away with the cake and came back with the walking frame.
The truth is that I love cake and have always enjoyed baking. It was one of the few things I could do really well, and Aggie couldn’t.
I can’t stop thinking about Aggie, and the Battenberg cake has reminded me of something that happened a few years after George died. I was at home, working in the garden. The phone rang. It was Aggie.
“Could you come over and help me make a cake?” she said. “I’ve been invited to a Bake and Buy sale next door and I’ve got to bring something homemade.”
I looked down at my hands and, even though it was only May, there was already a thin line of compost under my fingernails. “I’m not really dressed for it,” I said.
“You weren’t actually invited,” she replied, not sounding in any way apologetic. “I have to make a cake and I just need you to tell me what to do. I really don’t think I can do this on my own, Lenora.”
We both knew that she was probably right.
As an only child, Aggie had grown up the centre of attention of her rather elderly parents – at least they looked old to me, but my parents were barely in their twenties when they married and my brother, Jonathan, was supposedly a honeymoon baby. Money was tight for everyone in those days of post-war austerity, but she seemed to get pretty much everything she asked for, and she didn’t have to do chores to earn pocket money like me and my brothers.
I think Mr Bagshot worked in a bank, but I know Mrs Bagshot stayed at home. He loved to be in the garden and spent most of his free time in the potting shed or working on his car in the garage at the bottom of the garden, but she loved to cook. The kitchen was her kingdom and there she reigned supreme.
Where my brothers and I were dragged inside to help out with everything, including the cooking, Aggie was forbidden from entering the kitchen, and ate all her meals with a napkin on her lap in the dining room. As a consequence, she grew up with impeccable table manners, but didn’t learn how to boil an egg or even toast a piece of bread until she was an adult. Even when Mrs Bagshot was old and infirm and very short-sighted, she would still insist on overseeing every meal that Aggie prepared for them.
Of course, Aggie never married so after they died, she lived on her own in the house, but the spirit of Mrs Bagshot continued to hover over the hob and fill Aggie with fear and dread whenever she tried to prepare food. If it hadn’t been for the invention of the microwave and the ready meal, she would surely have faded away from malnutrition.
When I arrived at the Bagshot bungalow, Aggie was waiting for me on the doorstep.
“I think I’ve got everything you need,” she said.
“You asked me to come here and tell you what to do,” I said. “I didn’t realise you expected active participation.”
“But you’re so much better at this than me,” she pleaded, and she ushered me through the hallway into the kitchen.
She’d already placed all the ingredients on the kitchen table in readiness so I told her, “Just watch what I do so you can do it yourself next time. It’s not exactly difficult.”
“Yes, it is,” she shot back at me. “My mother was meticulous about preparing food and she said that making a really good Victoria Sandwich was an art in itself.”
“Well, I’ve always used a bit of artistic licence when it comes to baking cakes,” I said. “As long as you weigh things carefully, you can pretty much just throw everything in together.”
“That’s not what my mother told me,” Aggie replied. “You also need to use the correct utensils.”
I remember I stopped beating the butter into the caster sugar and offered Aggie my cross face. “For someone who doesn’t know a lemon zester and from a potato peeler, you aren’t exactly in a position to offer advice on anything connected with cooking.”
“I’m only trying to be helpful.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Just watch and learn.”
I talked her through each stage, explaining why you beat in the eggs but fold in the flour, and it soon became clear that she was really only interested in the science of the process; she didn’t give two hoots whether we made a coffee cream gateau or a lemon drizzle cake.
“But you must have a zester,” I exclaimed in surprise after we’d agreed that lemon drizzle was nicer than coffee cream.
“Possibly,” she said. “But if it looks anything like a potato peeler then I probably threw it out when Mother died.”
“Why would you do that?”
She sighed and looked back at me as though I were an exasperating child. “When Mother died, I went through the whole house and threw out everything that we had two of: it seemed such a waste of space to keep a lot of unnecessary equipment that I was never going to use.”
“But now we want to use it,” I pointed out with some irritation.
She rolled her eyes at me. “Can’t we just use a potato peeler? Surely it has the same essential function?”
In the end, we opted for a simple chocolate butter cream cake and when it was done, Aggie happily added the finishing touch with a light dusting of icing sugar sieved through a lacy paper doily she found in a box in the pantry.
I examined the doily with interest. “I didn’t think they made these anymore.”
“I’m sure they must,” Aggie replied. “That’s how you serve cake.”
“Not in my house,” I said.
“Well, perhaps not these days,” Aggie admitted, “but Mother always set a nice table for tea.”
“We only had cake on Sundays,” I said. “And then we had to take it outside, so we didn’t drop crumbs on the carpet. In fact, I spent most of my childhood eating in the garden.”
Aggie looked horrified. “Not breakfast, surely?”
“Especially breakfast,” I said. “I must have been about five when Jonnie showed
me how to toast bread and spread a bit of jam and butter on it. Being the eldest, he took it upon himself to teach the rest of us everything we needed to know so we didn’t starve.”
“What about your mother?” Aggie asked. “What was she doing?”
“Working, I expect,” I said. “Farming was a very different business in those days, and everyone had to muck in. We never went hungry though.”
Aggie looked sad. “I feel bad now – about you not having cake for tea.”
I laughed, lifted up my blouse and demonstrated the expanding, elastic waistband on my trousers. “As you can tell, I’ve made up for it every day since.”
Something in Aggie’s face changed. It was an expression that was hard to interpret but looked rather like an unwelcome memory had suddenly resurfaced. “Do you remember the little blonde girl who used to work with me?”
“Very short hair and lots of black eyeliner?”
“Yes. Melanie Mitchell. She told me she and her friends used to bake fairy cakes with marijuana in them. Because they didn’t smoke,” she added by way of explanation.
“My brother Angus tried that once with disastrous consequences...” I started to say.
Aggie ignored my interruption. “When she told me that,” she went on,” it made me realise you could put anything in a cake.”
“Anything?”
“Anything. And nobody would know because the person who ate the cake would have eaten the evidence.”
“Isn’t that why they have autopsies?” I pointed out.
“Only if the person died under suspicious circumstances,” she said, and then she laughed a little awkwardly and looked away.
I remember I was struck by the incongruity of this conversation; I sensed that something of importance had unwittingly been confided to me. It was only much, much later that I learned the truth.