‘Memories,’ she says, as if I’m very, very stupid. ‘Our memories are what make us who we are. Some are real. Some are made up. But they are the stories that tell us who we are. Without them we are nobody.’ She turns to look out of the window again.
I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t.
‘You have dementia?’ I say.
‘Yes. The terminal illness where you get to die twice. Two for the price of one. Lucky me, eh?’
‘You might find you’re worrying about nothing. Everyone forgets stuff when they get old. I mean slightly older,’ I amend hastily as Gloria huffs. ‘Even Mum does it. She’s always walking into a room and saying, “What did I come in here for?” It’s normal. And worrying about it probably makes you notice it more so you think it’s more serious than it is. If you just try to be positive—’
She shakes her head and looks at me through the smoke. ‘Don’t patronize me, dear. You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Young people think everything can be solved with a bit of positive thinking and an inspirational quote about believing or being you or dancing in the rain.’
In spite of myself I can’t help silently agreeing with her. Carl’s big on inspirational quotes and stuck one up in the downstairs loo that says LIVE EVERY MOMENT! LOVE LIKE YOU’VE NEVER BEEN HURT! LAUGH OUT LOUD! which makes me feel harangued when all I want to do is go for a wee in peace.
‘But Peggy said—’
‘Oh yes?’ Gloria interrupts. ‘What did Peggy say exactly?
I try to work out how to say ‘that you’re a bit mad and untidy and drink too much’ diplomatically. ‘She said she thought you might be worrying yourself unnecessarily. And you seem okay,’ I say, not sure whether I’m being honest or not. It’s hard to judge what’s ‘okay’ when I’ve never met her before. ‘I mean, we’re sitting here having a conversation, aren’t we?’
She shakes her head.
‘Mostly everything’s fine. I can talk to you. I can remember who I am and where I am and why.’
‘Well then. What’s the problem?’
‘And then suddenly I reach for a word, not a difficult word, not “onomatopoeia” or “discombobulated”. Something simple, something that should just be there, like “hand” or “bottle”—’ she holds up the one she’s about to pour another drink from as if it somehow proves her point—‘and the word’s not there. There’s just empty space. It’s like when you think you’ve got to the bottom of a flight of stairs and you put your foot down and you’re waiting for your foot to connect with the solid surface you know should be there. But instead of the floor there’s just air and you realize you’re falling . . .’
‘But everyone forgets words. And, well . . .’
She sees me looking at her half-empty glass, which I can’t help feeling might be at least part of the problem, and tuts.
‘It’s nothing to do with that. It’s not just words. Sometimes I’ll forget where I am. One time I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I lived. The only address I could remember was the house I grew up in. That’s the thing with this disease, you see. As the present fades the past becomes clearer. I know what it does to you. I saw it with my mum.’
‘You mum had dementia?’
‘I remember her calling out for dead people, thinking they were in the next room.’
I think about this, about how frightened Gloria must feel.
‘Was this the house you grew up in?’ I say, holding out the photo I found in the bedroom, wanting to change the subject and also hoping to move her on to the subject of Nan, to see if I can find out what happened between them, whether they’d fallen out and what about.
‘We were very close when we were growing up,’ Gloria says. There’s something about the way she says it that makes me decide it’s best not to ask any more. She takes the photo from me. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘That’s me and Gwen outside the house in Clapham. She must have been eighteen in that picture. Which means I’d have been, what, ten?’
‘Clapham?’ I say, surprised. ‘That’s not all that far from where I live. Same side of the river anyway.’ For some reason I’d assumed Gloria must have grown up around here.
‘I dream about it so often, that house,’ she says. The house I grew up in. It’s never exactly how it was; places never are in dreams, are they? Why is that? I wonder. But I remember it so clearly. Tiny details only children notice. If I close my eyes I can see the pattern on the wallpaper in my bedroom. The way the shadow of the laburnum tree in the garden fell across my bedcovers in the morning. The smell of soap flakes in the kitchen.’ She closes her eyes and breathes it in. ‘Strange how clear it all is. Things from decades ago. I can see them. Smell them. I feel I could almost reach out and touch them. But all the time the present and future are disappearing, until one day all I’ll have is fragments of the past. So many places that formed my life and they’ll be wiped from my mind. I won’t even know they existed. People too. I can see that house in my dreams, and yet I’ll never see it again in real life.’
I stare at her and I have an idea.
‘Let’s go,’ I say.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I could take you,’ I say. ‘I’ve got Mum’s car while they’re away. We could go there.’
She looks confused.
‘Where?’
‘To your old house, if you want to. So you can see it one last time.’
‘Go there?’ She looks doubtful.
I nod, excited by the idea. ‘Why not?’
‘There are lots of reasons why not,’ she says.
‘But if you’re right, if you really are losing your memory—’
‘I am right.’
‘Well then, wouldn’t you like to see it again while it still means something to you?’
For a moment something flickers across her face and I think she’s going to say yes but it vanishes. She looks away from me, through the window to the street outside.
‘What’s the point?’ she says. ‘It’ll all be gone soon. Everything I’ve ever done. Everyone I’ve ever known.’
I want to argue with her, to persuade her, but I don’t want to make her angry again, and anyway, I can’t force her to do it if she doesn’t want to. I can’t imagine how it must feel to face a future like hers.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
She turns back to me, her face fierce. ‘I don’t want pity,’ she says. ‘Not from you. Not from those interfering halfwits from social services. Not from them downstairs.’
‘Peggy and Malcolm seem really kind. They’re only trying to help—’
‘I don’t want help. That’s exactly what I’m trying to explain, if you people would only listen. I want to be left alone to live and die at a time and in a manner of my own choosing. So please, if you really want to help, go away and leave me in peace.’
I try to understand what she’s saying to me.
‘In a time and manner of your own choosing . . . ?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It’s my business how and when I die. No one else’s.’
She looks at me defiantly.
‘You want to . . . end your own life?’
She shrugs. ‘Perhaps.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I say, shaking my head.
‘Believe what you like.’
‘Even if that’s true—’
‘It is.’
‘Why not make the most of the time you do have? Why push people away when they care about you?’
‘People all think they know what’s best for you. But they can’t.’
‘So you’re just going to lock yourself away? Cut yourself off from everyone?’
‘Yes.’
I look around at the chaos, the mess, the empty bottles, the room full of the leftover pieces of a life, left behind like driftwood as the tide goes out. Gloria’s acting as though her life is already over.
‘But you can’t.’
She turns to me, fierce. ‘I’ve always done as I choose. I’m not go
ing to stop now.’
‘I’m trying to help.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m your family.’
She turns away. ‘Well, I’ve never been one for family. It became clear fairly early on in my life that I was better off without my family and they were better off without me.’
Her voice sounds a little choked and I can’t work out whether she’s upset or angry. Again I wonder what the story is behind her disappearance from the family tree. Why hadn’t we known about her?
‘You don’t even know me.’
‘But I want to. I could if you’d let me.’
She turns away.
‘There’s no point. I’ve already told you. There’s no point. I’m going to die.’
‘We’re all going to die,’ I say, impatiently. ‘Why not live while you’ve still got the chance?’ I realize I sound like one of Carl’s posters and try again. ‘I could die before you. I could walk out of here and get run over by a bus. Does that mean I should just give up on everything and sit around feeling sorry for myself and getting drunk?’
Her mouth twists into a smirk.
‘It’s easy for young people to talk about death. You don’t really believe it’ll ever happen to you.’
‘I think you’re just wallowing in self-pity.’
She looks at me, her face tight with fury. ‘You can’t understand any of this. I don’t want you here, in my home. I don’t want to know you. You don’t interest me. You’re just a silly child.’ Then she twists herself round on the chaise longue so her back is turned towards me. ‘Go home.’
And now I’m not only knackered and very low blood-sugar (which, as Reuben has pointed out, does tend to turn me into something resembling the Incredible Hulk) not to mention pregnant and anxious and angry, but also insulted AND humiliated. And I lose it.
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘I’m going. I’ve done my best. I’m not going to stick around to be insulted. I’ve got enough to worry about—’
‘Oh, really?‘ She spits the words at me. ‘What have you got to worry about? You young people and your cosseted lives and your sense of entitlement. What’s the problem? Mummy won’t buy you the car you want? Not enough channels on the widescreen TV in your bedroom?’
Her words sting. I’ve come all this way to see her and she’s treating me like a spoilt, naive kid. Tears spring to my eyes. I hope she doesn’t see them.
‘Actually I’m pregnant,’ I say, the words out of my mouth before I knew I was going to say them. They sound strange and unreal, hanging in the smoky air. It’s a relief somehow. For a fleeting, crazy second it feels as though I’ve come here just to say it, just to tell Gloria this fact, just to share it with her.
She stops and stares at me, absolutely still. ‘What?’ she says, and her voice is different, soft. ‘What did you say?’
‘Goodbye,’ I say, and I walk out of the room, fumbling for the front door through the dark of the hallway and the blur of my tears.
‘Hattie!’ Gloria calls. ‘Wait!’
I slam the door hard behind me and I run down the stairs. I don’t stop to say goodbye to Peggy and Malcolm. I can’t. I just run out of the front door and down the front path, trying to remember the way to the Tube station.
The tears are still coming as I walk down the road, turning back to see Gloria’s face, pale at the window, watching me go.
I watch as she walks down the road, turning back once to look up at the window, then turning away. Is she still crying? I can’t tell. I don’t care, I tell myself. I have always been good at telling myself lies, always found that if you say a thing enough times you can make yourself believe it, if you ignore a thing long enough it will go away. But it seems I am losing my knack for it.
I close my eyes. When I open them she will have disappeared from view she will be gone and I will forget her; I will forget her name, and then that she ever came, and then that she ever existed in the first place, and that will be that.
But when I close my eyes she does not go away. She is there, still, looking at me with my mother’s eyes. I curse my brain. Why must it remember the things I want it to forget?
‘No,’ I say to the girl, even though she is only in my head. ‘Go away. Shoo.’ I say it because I have drunk a little too much on an empty stomach, and because no one can hear me, and because even if they could I have never much cared whether people think I am crazy or not. Which I suppose I am, talking to an imaginary girl as though she were a stray cat who had sneaked into my flat. But mainly I say it because there is panic beating in my chest. She brings other things with her, this girl, other things that I would rather forget. She doesn’t know it, of course, this (I look at her name, scrawled on the back of my hand) Hattie. I had written it hurriedly when she was out of the room, busybodying about in the kitchen.
Why did I write it, though, if I want to forget?
I sit down on the chaise and light a cigarette. It is entirely the wrong thing to do if you have dementia, as St Peggy is forever telling me, as is drinking large quantities of gin, and this pleases me immensely. It becomes harder to rebel as you get old, largely because no one takes any notice of you no matter what you do. But ignoring good advice is a luxury that shouldn’t be monopolized by the young, in my not particularly humble opinion.
I lie back and close my eyes and allow myself to drift. I am spinning in the sunshine in the middle of the Common. I see a jam jar of pale-pink roses, I can smell them. Be careful, Gloria, my mother is saying, but there is blood dripping on her yellow-flowered dress . . . I feel the ache of cold feet in too-pointed shoes, the soft, thrilling warmth of a kiss in the snow. I am lying in the heat of summer thinking of Sam. I hear feet on the stairs and I freeze. I see a dropped mirror, shattered on the floor. That’s seven years’ bad luck—
No. I try to make it stop but the images keep coming, clear but disjointed, like those old home movies people used to make. I smell the green leather and smoky tea and antiseptic cleanness and somewhere babies are crying as the afternoon sun slants in through large, draughty windows and I cannot make them stop. I don’t know how and panic numbs me—
I am closing my fingers round the cool metal of a locket that I will keep safe but never open.
I am standing on the edge of a cliff—
NO. I will not go back there.
And yet—
It is my story. It is a story no one left alive knows except for me. And soon, unless I tell it, it will be gone, washed away like words written in the sand as the tide comes in . . .
It is a liberating thought. It will be as if none of it happened. It will be unwritten.
Except that it won’t. Except that it can’t be. I cannot pretend that it can. Not now. That is what she has done by coming here today. Hattie.
And perhaps I don’t want it to be. Perhaps the only way to release yourself from a secret, from the past, is to share it. Perhaps it is like confession, the act of admitting the sin is the way to release yourself from it . . . Bless me, Father, for I have sinned . . . I see the shape of Sister Mary Francis dark against the sun.
It is so clear, all of it. So vivid. I can smell it, I can feel it. It is the curse of this disease; it erases the present and the future so that all you are left with is the past.
I am scared.
Am I brave enough to tell my story to her, to the girl? To – what was her name again?
Hattie. Yes. The girl carrying a secret.
Perhaps I can. If I go back there I can’t do it alone. Perhaps I can take her with me.
After all, it is her story too.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject:
Well, Reuben, even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day as the saying goes. And on this occasion you were – well, not right exactly, but not as wrong as you usually are. My great-aunt was completely mad. And rude. I shouldn’t have gone to visit her.
But looking on the bright side she wasn’t a seria
l killer. And I didn’t have to wear a Slave Leia bikini.
Hope you’re ok. Would be good to hear from you. Are you getting on ok with your dad? Is it weird after so long? What’s his new girlfriend like?
Hxx
I don’t tell anyone at home about what happened at Gloria’s. When Mum asks me about it I avoid telling her much. I tell her she was tired so I couldn’t stay long.
‘What was she like?’
‘Okay. I mean, you know. She was old. She’s got Alzheimer’s or something. Dementia.’
‘That’s sad,’ Mum says, as she folds shorts and T-shirts for the twins. ‘Look, I’ll give her a call when we’re back from Spain, see what we can do for her.’
‘I wouldn’t bother,’ I say. ‘I don’t think she really wants any help.
‘It can be hard for people to accept they need help,’ Mum says.
‘Hmmm.’
Mum watches me closely.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say.
Luckily she and Carl are too busy rushing around getting ready to go on holiday to pay too much attention to me. Even so, Mum is fussing around me like she senses something isn’t quite right.
‘I wish you were coming with us,’ she says for the ten-billionth time.
‘We could always look into last-minute flights if you like, Hats,’ Carl says. Bless him.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ve got all my shifts at the Happy Diner.’
I’d decided not to go with them before I knew Reuben and Kat weren’t going to be around. I’d thought we’d have the house to ourselves for two and a half weeks while they were away in Spain and then staying with Carl’s annoying sister Becky and her family for a few days on the way back. Now I’ll be stuck here on my own. Half of me wishes I was going but I know Mum would work out something was wrong if we spent nearly three weeks together and I can’t face telling her yet. I want to get everything straight in my own head. A bit of time to myself will give me the space to work it all out. I’m hoping everything will suddenly seem clear. At the moment I can’t even think about it without my head going fuzzy with panic.
How Not to Disappear Page 7