Standing there now, looking at the ornaments, I swayed a little on my feet. They were Mother’s special things, but she wasn’t here to look at them. I wondered if they missed her.
The clock chimed half past four. I’d have to go to the hospital this evening. I sat in Mother’s armchair, smoothing out the crease between my eyebrows. I’d never been on my own for longer than a day before. Mother didn’t think I could manage. She stood over me when I switched the oven on and went back afterward to check I’d switched it off, and she was always sniffing in case I’d left a gas burner on. It made me nervous. I felt nervous now. How would I know which bus to catch? How would I find the right ward in the hospital? I wouldn’t be able to ask anybody because I was no good at conversation.
I went upstairs, pulled the curtains, and got into bed, although it was only my brain that was tired. I lay there for a long time, but in the end, I got up because of the potatoes. We normally had dinner at seven, but I would not be at home then. I’d be visiting Mother who would also not be at home.
Mother used to say she wasn’t at home when people called and she didn’t want to see them. It was me who had to tell them, and I didn’t like saying it because it wasn’t true. When I was younger, there had been unwelcome visitors, men in suits with clipboards, or men with shaven heads who looked like boxers and who tried to peer around the door. Bailiffs, they’d said they were, something to do with taking unwanted furniture away.
I rubbed my forehead. I was still worried about the potatoes. I heard Mother’s voice in my mind—Preparation, Elvira, is the key—so I cut the potatoes up and put them in a pan of cold water, ready for when I got back. I brushed my hair and put on my shoes and the navy woolen coat I’ve had for more than six years, since I was twenty-one. It was still smart, even though I could no longer do up the bottom two buttons.
Mother said my fleece jacket was just for informal occasions such as going to the Library. I chewed my lip as I fastened the top button. I wasn’t sure if going to a hospital counted as a formal occasion, but it was probably more formal than the Library. Thinking about going to the hospital scared me. I didn’t go to new places very often and, since the Incidents, never on my own. This would be the first time I’d been to a hospital, except for being born. The sand shifted beneath my feet again.
• • •
I walked along the main road, turning around when I heard a bus. It had HOSPITAL written in capital letters on the front, so it was easier to get there than I’d expected. I was surprised how big and bright and shiny the hospital was. I had to screw up my eyes against the glare. It had corridors everywhere, like an anthill. It took me a long time to find Jersey Ward because I couldn’t understand all the arrows and the little maps. It would have been easier if the wards had had proper names like Kidneys, Heart, Skin, or Old People.
In the end, I followed an old man shuffling along with a shopping bag, thinking he might be visiting an old person in Jersey Older People’s Ward. He was, which meant I’d been resourceful, a word Mother used about herself. She would be surprised when I told her.
Mother was in a room with old ladies in it. Although she’d always said she wasn’t old, she looked old now. She lay with her eyes shut. Her face was sunken, her body tiny under the sheet. For a moment I thought she was dead, but when I said “Mother?” her eyes flew open and she made sounds and plucked at the sheet with her left hand.
There was a rustling. A nurse in a pale-blue uniform came up, her shoes squeaking on the shiny floor. She had dark skin and a white smile.
“You’re Agnes’s daughter, are you?”
Mother’s eyes opened again and fixed on her. She didn’t like strangers using her Christian name. Her lopsided mouth and glaring eyes made her look like the gargoyle above the door of St. Anne’s Church Hall where she used to go for Bridge.
The nurse’s smile shrank when I asked if Mother had had a stroke. She lowered her voice. It looked likely, but they wouldn’t know until all the tests were back. She didn’t know how long Mother would have to stay either. There would be an Assessment. When Mother moaned and tried to heave herself up, the nurse gently pushed her back down again, saying, “No exertion please, Agnes. Rest is vital at this stage.”
Mother’s eyes closed. I’d never heard anyone speak to her like that before. It was how she spoke to other people.
• • •
It was after half past eight by the time I got off the bus. I rang Sylvia-next-door’s bell to tell her what had happened to Mother and how I’d managed to visit her on my own. As I waited for Sylvia to answer, I looked back at our house. I’d never seen it in the dark, without anyone inside it, before.
Sylvia clapped her hand to her mouth when I told her, and I noticed her red nail polish was chipped on her first two fingers. She reached out to pat my arm, saying, “I’ll pop in to see her tomorrow, and then we’ll have a proper chat.”
Ordinarily, I didn’t like people touching me. I felt their imprint for hours afterward, like a burn, but this time it made me feel steadier on my feet as I made my way back to our dark house.
Mother used to say Sylvia was kind but common. She had been the manager of a Workingman’s Club (fries, beer, and Skittles, Mother said, her lip curling), but she didn’t work there anymore. Sometimes she would pop in for a cuppa, which meant coming over to have a cup of tea. Sylvia gave Mother lifts in her car, and I’d buy flowers at Asda for Mother to give her as a Token of Appreciation. Every week, I took over the Daily Telegraphs that Mother had finished reading for Sylvia to line her kitchen bin with. (The Daily Telegraph has many uses because of its large size.)
Trevor, Sylvia’s husband, never popped over for a cuppa. He only came around to change lightbulbs for Mother, because of being tall and not needing a ladder, and to agree with her about politics. He’d look down at me, hands stretched up to the light socket, beard bristling, without speaking. He was always in a hurry, which was why he never had time for conversation.
Sylvia’s usual Facial Expression was easy to recognize because it was the same as the card labeled Happy in the display of Facial Expressions on the wall of my old classroom at school.
I wasn’t sure how old Sylvia was because she had blond hair and wore brightly colored clothes, but when she was hanging out her laundry last week, the wind blew her hair against her head and the roots were white, not yellow. She might be nearly as old as Mother underneath. Thinking about Sylvia being old gave me the hollow, sand-shifting feeling again. I got into bed with my clothes on and pulled the duvet over my head. I didn’t feel like doing anything, not even brushing my teeth, but later I worried about it and got up to clean them.
• • •
When Sylvia stopped by after seeing Mother, her eyes filled with tears and she called me pet as well as love. She hugged me too, which I wasn’t expecting. I didn’t know if I should hug her back because I hadn’t been hugged since Father died and I’d forgotten how to do it, so I just let my arms dangle until she stopped. She wiped her eyes, and I went to put the kettle on.
I didn’t get the cookie tin out from behind its barrier of serving dishes at the back of the cupboard, even though I knew it was full of Bourbons, because Mother and I only had cookies at eleven o’clock and at three. Bourbons were introduced by Peek Freans in 1910. They were called Creolas at first, and they’re an unusual cookie because they’re chocolate flavored, rather than chocolate coated. (I’m interested in all the different varieties of cookies and their histories and packaging. I know a lot about them.)
Sylvia and I sat on the sofa together, and she held my hand. “A real shock for you, pet.” She looked into my eyes, and I dropped my gaze. “How are you feeling?”
“Hot.”
“You did well going in to see your mum. On your own!”
I glanced up at Sylvia. Her dark eyebrows formed two perfect semicircles.
“She must have been proud of you.” S
ylvia squeezed my hand.
“She didn’t say. She couldn’t speak.” I pulled at a fold of my gray sweater with my spare hand, then—Sweater! I heard Mother shout—and I stopped.
My hand felt sweaty under Sylvia’s. She was quiet for so long this time that I had to look at her again in case it was my turn to speak and I’d missed it.
“Your mum used to worry about leaving you on your own. How you’d manage.” Sylvia shifted her position.
I nodded. This was about me leaving the gas on and missing Special Offers on vegetables.
The nail polish on Sylvia’s hands, clasping mine, was freshly painted. She said Mother had talked to her about what would happen when she… Sylvia didn’t finish the sentence. Then she said, It comes to all of us in the end, pet.
The end meant something to do with death. I pulled my hands away to grip the seat of the sofa. The world slipped away around me, and the inside of my body felt hollow. I wanted to lie down.
“But Mother’s still alive.” I stared at the floor. I didn’t like looking into people’s eyes so I looked at the ground instead. Because of this, I had a wide knowledge of floor coverings. I noticed dust too, and dropped things. Also people’s shoes and litter.
“Yes, pet.” Sylvia kept patting my hand. “But your mum might always need to be looked after now.” When I said that that was my job, she asked me how I could lift her on my own, and how would she get to the toilet? “Her brain’s damaged, pet. Nobody can mend that.”
I thought about Mother’s damaged brain. Her crossword skills and all the things she knew about Operas and Adventurous Cooking and other countries would be leaking out and going to waste.
Sylvia said Mother had made Arrangements for me in case… My heart thudded because Arrangements meant people organizing things without me joining in. Mother had arranged things before, like signing me up to a Table Tennis Club at St. Anne’s Church Hall without asking me first. She’d gotten cross when I refused to go and kept talking about my BMI. But, Sylvia said, shifting on the sofa again, it was the financial, legal kind of things she meant. Things that’ll make it easier for you to live on your own, pet.
On your own. Mother used to tell people she’d been left on her own when Father died. “Except for Elvira, of course,” she’d add. She’d look at me without smiling, but the person she was talking to would smile and mention comfort and company, and then Mother would make a sound like she was blowing her nose without a hanky. I’d never been left on my own before. I didn’t want to be on my own. Not all the time, not forever.
Then Sylvia said that Mother had thought… She stopped and glanced at me. Mother had thought I might be safer in Sheltered Accommodation.
Everything seemed to drain away. “I don’t want to be sent Away!”
“Shh, shh, pet. Your mum thought you’d get more support there, that’s all.”
I was rocking to and fro. “I want to stay at home. I don’t want to live with Strangers!” I felt Sylvia’s arm around me.
“There, there. Let’s see, pet. See how you go.”
See what? Go where? Everything was bewildering.
Sylvia leaned close, taking both my hands in hers. “Let’s just think about now, pet.” She talked about me taking Mother some clean nighties and a little travel kit with her toiletries and told me that if I wanted a cup of tea and a chat or advice about anything, I knew where she was. I nodded, taking my hands away and holding tightly to the hem of my sweater. I did know. She lived next door.
2.
One is fun.
—Delia Smith, cook and author
Mother and I were tidy people. A place for everything and everything in its place, Elvira, she’d say, looking at me from over the top of her glasses. She kept the toiletries bag she used on her travels in the top left-hand drawer of her chest of drawers. She hadn’t used it since Father died because of not being able to leave me on my own. Before that, she’d taken it with her on cruise liners where she gave talks on Operas and Birthplaces of the Great Composers.
It was made of Liberty print with a waterproof lining. Inside were a folding toothbrush, a sponge, and some miniature soaps. Mother had kept it packed in case a cruise liner needed an Opera teacher in a hurry. She kept her passport in it too, in a plastic bag. I took it out now because I knew she wouldn’t need it in the hospital.
Pushed right to the back of the drawer was Father’s red paisley washbag. I was surprised to see it, because after he died six years ago—suddenly, while he was Away—Mother had gotten rid of most of his things. His washbag was smaller than Mother’s, although he’d gone Away far more often. Inside were his passport and a half-empty bottle of English Leather aftershave. I sniffed, conjuring up Father, smiling, eyes crinkling, saying, Hello, Vivi darling. He was the only person who called me that. I screwed the wooden lid back on tightly, so the scent would keep, and looked at his passport.
It was in good condition, considering it had been used so often. Father had built bridges in Kenya, and he’d often worked in Japan. The Japanese trips had meant him being Away for ages, once for more than a year. Each time he came back, he’d brought me a different netsuke, a tiny carved animal that Japanese people wore on their belts.
After the very long trip, he’d brought me back a Japanese notebook, patterned with cherry blossom, with a red silk ribbon to mark the page, and Mother a red silk kimono, embroidered with cranes (birds, not lifting machines! Father had joked. I’d laughed, understanding the joke for once) to wear as a dressing gown. Actually, Mother had hardly ever worn it because of disliking lounging, and it was still hanging up behind her bedroom door.
I liked the idea of Japan. Everyone would be foreign there, so I wouldn’t seem so different.
I opened Father’s passport. The pages were blank. I looked twice more because I often got things wrong, but they were definitely empty. How could that be possible?
His old passports were bundled together with a rubber band at the back of the drawer. I leafed through them. There were his photos, a younger and younger Father, with swept-back hair and neat eyebrows. Some African stamps from the 1960s and 1970s. I turned more pages. There were no other stamps. There was no mention of Japan anywhere.
In the passport photos, as in real life, Father’s mouth had an upward curl. I wished he were still here for me to ask why there were no Official Records of his Japanese trips. Father had never minded me asking him questions, even ones Mother said were silly. He had never laughed at them. He’d pat the sofa and say, Come and sit down, Vivi, darling, and tell me what you want to know. I used to ask him things like how could people ever have landed on the moon when it was only the size of a football. If he were here now, alive, I’d ask him when he thought Mother would be coming home.
Of course Mother would know why there were no Japanese stamps or dates! She’d know. She knew everything. At least she had. I leaned against the chest of drawers, a washbag in each hand. I squeezed Mother’s gently and thought about her damaged brain, holed like a sponge, with all its information leaking out.
• • •
Mother was in the same bed as yesterday. She clutched the sleeve of my coat with her left hand. “Not that way,” she said.
“Not which way?” I asked.
“Not that way.” Her hand dropped.
She said it again when I asked about Father’s trips to Japan, shouted it in fact, and clung to my sleeve again. Her eyes were round and bulging. I knew, from the Facial Expression cards, this indicated Anger.
• • •
I didn’t mention Father’s passport to Mother again because of the shouting, and when I asked Sylvia, she said, “Before my time, pet,” very quickly and then asked me about Mother’s laundry.
There was nobody else to ask, so I wrote, Why are there no Japanese Stamps in Father’s Passport? on the first page of the Japanese notebook that Father had brought me back. Things were ea
sier once I’d written them down. Clearer. There were no distractions in written things.
I chewed the end of my pencil. When Father was in the Army in Kenya, he’d worked for the Government, building bridges. Perhaps he’d worked for the Government in Japan too. Perhaps he’d been there on a Secret Mission with another passport and a false name. There was a Mills & Boon story where the hero worked for the Secret Service—Diplomat in Danger, it was called—and used different passports. That would explain why Father never spoke about his trips, except to say, Just business, darling, terribly dull.
I noted this idea under the question on page one. On page two I wrote: When is Mother coming out of the hospital? Then I sat cross-legged on the bedroom carpet and rolled the notebook’s silky ribbon between my fingers for a long time.
• • •
Mother had therapy for her stroke, but she still couldn’t move her legs or her right arm, or say anything beyond the three words: Not that way.
There were lots of new things I had to do now: visiting Mother twice a day, using the bus, deciding what to eat, shopping without her list, doing the housework without supervision, being alert to Incidents, trying to show I was safe on my own. Managing it all sent me to bed in the daytime. In bed, I listed all the different varieties of cookies I knew, and their brands, and said them in alphabetical order, but it didn’t always make me feel better.
At night, I thought about burglars and worse. That was when I felt particularly unsafe without Mother. When I woke, I couldn’t stop listening for sounds, and several times I had to go down and wedge a chair under the front door handle. I’d hear it topple if anyone burst in. I hadn’t felt nervous at night with Mother there because, although she was small and walked with a stick, I knew her waving it, or shouting, or looking at a burglar from over the top of her glasses would frighten him away.
The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr Page 2