by James Hannah
‘We’ve just come to collect a few of her things. Hospital bag and nightie, slippers. We’re going to take them home and – I don’t know, wash them or something.’
She looks up at me and smiles.
‘How are you?’
‘I’m – I’m doing OK at the moment, thanks. It’s a relief mostly, I think. She’s – she did so well. I’m so proud of her.’
I nod, smile.
She looks down in her lap, and seems to see what she’s carrying. ‘I brought you some flowers.’
‘Ah man, how have you found time to do that?’
‘I wanted to go and have a look at some flowers for Mum, and I thought you’d like some to brighten up your day.’
‘Ah wow, they’re lovely.’ She hands me the wrap of about twenty stems. ‘Man, just amazing. Ranunculus, absolutely my favourite – how did you know?’
‘You said you used to work at the garden centre up by the junction.’
‘Are these from there?’ I turn the tag over and see the familiar old logo.
‘I went out there this morning and mentioned you, and they said they thought you’d like these best.’
I’m stunned.
‘I know you don’t want many visitors, so you can’t get many flowers or anything. So I wanted to let you know I’ve been thinking about you, and I’m really – like – really thankful to you. And all the people you used to work with are thinking of you as well.’
I catch my breath, rattle, and there’s nothing else I can say.
What can I say?
She is golden.
‘Twenty-two years I worked there,’ I say.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she says. ‘It seemed like – it seemed like a thing to do.’
‘Just – thank you.’
She gathers up the flowers and sets about arranging them neatly in my water jug. I watch her, amused. Not sure Sheila’s going to like the smattering of rebellion.
‘What?’ says Amber, turning and seeing my look. ‘I’m improvising.’
‘You go for it.’
While she finishes her little act of vandalism, I straighten myself in the bed and try to slap my face into some kind of being. With permission, Amber rinses her fingertips in the bathroom and flicks the excess on to the floor on her way back to the visitors’ chair.
‘I – I wanted to tell you,’ she says, ‘I didn’t exactly go to the garden centre just to get flowers.’
‘No?’
‘Not at first. I wanted to – I wanted to see if I could find her.’ She gestures at my blanket. ‘Your girlfriend, who crocheted your blanket. You spoke so warmly about her, and you seemed so much in love, I wanted – I wanted to see if I could get you to see her again.’
I feel absolutely still. Absolutely calm.
‘I asked the man there if he knew her, and where I might find her. He told me. She – she died, didn’t she?’
Silence.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She did.’ I look down at my blanket, settle a couple of the stitches.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want to know and then pretend I didn’t.’
‘No. I wouldn’t want you to.’
She looks up at me and smiles. ‘I cried in front of the man.’
A warm ache rises through my chest as I picture it.
‘Oh, Amber, I’m – I’m really sorry. I should have told you.’
‘No,’ she says, ‘no, no – I shouldn’t have – it was a dumb thing to try and do.’
I shake my head slowly. ‘A lovely thing.’
‘It just made me feel so sad for you.’ She sniffs. ‘I’m sorry, that’s probably not what you want to hear, is it? It’s just – everything’s really on the surface for me at the moment.’ She half-laughs.
‘It is sad. The saddest.’
‘When – when did she die?’
‘Ten years ago, now.’
‘What happened?’
And there it is again. I might have asked the same question before I learned all the questions you’re never supposed to ask.
What’s that in your throat?
My chest swells again as the question washes over me like a sluice of icy water.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude.’
‘No, no,’ I say. ‘I–’
‘It seems so unfair. From the way you were talking about her – everything – she seemed like – she seemed incredibly special.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, absently cupping my arm through the blanket.
‘I don’t know if I could ever be that special to anyone.’
‘Oh, you will.’
She laughs quietly to herself, evidently weighing up her invisible options. ‘I don’t think I’d know where to begin.’
‘Just be. Just be yourself.’
She looks down at her knees, and I feel like I know exactly what she’s thinking.
‘There are people around, people who make you feel energetic,’ I say. ‘And there are people who are just–’ I reach around for the right amount of contempt ‘–they suck the fun out of everything. They’re fun-suckholes.’
‘Yeah,’ she smiles, looking up.
‘Well, you give energy. Look at you. You’re going through the worst you’ll ever go through now, and you’re still being creative. That’s life.’
Amber purses her lips and looks to the floor.
‘Surround yourself with as many people like that as you can – that’s what I think. Energy-givers. Life-livers. People who make you feel most like yourself.’
‘That was how my mum used to be, before she got ill. Really playful, creative, really fun.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m worried,’ she says, looking up at me now with tears in her eyes, ‘that I’m only going to remember the little frail woman in that big bed and – that’s not my mum at all. That’s not how I want to remember her.’
I set down my mask, and look into her tearful eyes.
‘Give it time,’ I say. ‘I promise it will change.’
‘Knock-knock …’
A sing-songy voice. A kind voice.
Who’s–?
‘Are you awake?’
Mm?
Sheila. Her face looking down at me now. Look at her mascara. Thick. A bit much today.
‘Hello, lovey,’ she says gently. ‘You awake, are you?’
‘Mm?’
‘I’m sorry to wake you, but there’s someone who wants to say hello, and I wondered if you wanted to see her.’
Amber? Is it Amber back?
‘What day is it?’
‘Still Saturday.’
‘What’s the time?’
‘Half-past eleven.’
I take a moment to clear my throat, try to pull my thoughts into some sort of order. Sheila has drawn away and is talking softly out in the corridor. There’s a mutter and a shuffle.
‘Say to come in,’ I say. ‘Let her in.’
And so she appears in the doorway: Laura.
She’s heavily fortified with make-up, like a caricature of what I remember from all those years ago. It’s a mask to meet me with. But the wrinkles and folds still encroach like bindweed, around her eyes and neck. Everything she’s been resisting over the years. Age creeps up on all of us.
‘Hiya,’ she says, before her mask creases and she crumples into tears.
Ah shit.
‘Aw, come now,’ says Sheila, plucking up a tissue and hurrying over to her. ‘Come on, let’s get you a chair, eh?’ She reaches for a plastic seat from the corridor and Laura allows herself to be settled at the end of the bed.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Laura, slowly pulling herself together, ‘I swore I wouldn’t cry.’
‘There’s no shame in crying,’ says Sheila. ‘We all cry, don’t we? Everybody cries.’
‘Yeah,’ blinks Laura, little girl, trying to be brave. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says again, finally able to focus on me, and then: ‘Hello.’
‘Hello.’
She has only fleetingly met my gaze; she’s spending a lot of time looking around on the floor, checking, checking her sitting position, checking the leg of the chair isn’t nudging the skirting board, checking behind her for – for whatever.
‘Now, you’ve got your coffee,’ says Sheila. ‘How about you?’ she says, looking over at me. ‘Can I get you anything? How’s your water?’
I shake my head – nothing for me. No water. No visitors. I said no visitors.
‘All right,’ says Sheila, retreating. ‘Make yourself at home, and I’ll see you later.’
She exits the room and shuts the door quietly behind her.
Alone together. The shock of her being here at all has quickly given way to – to what? I don’t know. I’m casting around to feel something, but I wonder if I feel nothing.
‘So, how are you?’ says Laura, finally looking at me properly and frowning.
‘Never better,’ I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t, as she begins to cry again.
‘I’m sorry, Ivo, I’m sorry, I just – I was so worried about coming here, but seeing you there like that, in your bed, I feel so stupid about all the years we’ve let slip.’
There it is, the last time Laura and I saw each other, a perfunctory goodbye in the car park of the Yew Tree as the tyres of other mourners’ cars tugged at the gravel around us. Job done, Mum safely in the soil. All organized by me, down to the buffet. Seven years. A lifetime ago.
‘It’s such a waste, you know? Don’t you think what a waste of time all this has been?’
And now I’m the one who can’t meet her gaze. You see, face to face I can’t back up what I’ve said so often in my mind. This is bigger than both of us, so should we just give each other up? Abandon hope? ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘A real waste.’
She hops out of her seat, and comes over and gives me a strong, deep hug. I’m not sure I want it, but I let it happen, and somewhere deep, deep in there, beneath the make-up and jangle of the great gesture, there’s warmth, there’s goodness.
‘I’m so glad,’ she says, releasing me from her grasp and sinking back into her seat. ‘I’m so glad I came. I was scared to come. I knew you wouldn’t want to see me. But I thought, Sod it, you know, whatever’s gone on, whatever rights and wrongs, you’re my brother, and I’m your sister, and that should mean something.’
‘I’m – yeah. I’m glad you came too,’ I say, with a dilute smile.
‘I wasn’t going to come, but Kelvin – he said we should both act like adults, so I agreed to come with him.’
‘Oh yeah? Is he here?’
‘He’s parking the car. I think he’s going to wait a few minutes to see if we start tearing each other’s hair out.’
‘No, well that was never going to happen, was it?’
‘No, I’ve just had mine done, so–’ She dabs at the edges of her hair, and I sort of do a little singular snort laugh. Funny. She’s funny. And how easily we fall back on those years of practice about how we slot together. The rhythms of a person, they become ingrained. These are the Laura patterns I’ve known all my life. It feels – it does, it feels nice, all this. It feels like me and Laura. Feels like home.
‘I got you some grapes,’ she says reaching down and drawing out a brown paper bag. ‘Sorry, it looks a bit feeble now. I would have got you something else, but–’
‘Fine, it’s fine,’ I say. ‘What do you buy for the man who has … you know.’
Her face tightens into a frown. ‘Kidney failure?’
I look at her and let go another laugh, and break out into a gurgling cough. ‘That’s not quite what I meant.’
She sits and watches me while I cough, and I think she might be a bit shocked.
‘What would Mum say if she could see us now, eh?’ I say.
‘She’d say, Shoes up, bags up, coats up.’ The old clarion call of Mum as she came in the front door to find we’d wrecked the house on our return from school.
‘You sound just like her, you know.’
‘Oh, don’t. Mal always used to say–’
My face must drop, because she stops suddenly and looks me directly in the eye, her mouth still open, like gasping.
‘I don’t want to talk about Mal,’ I say, flatly. I reach across to unhook the oxygen mask from the top of the oxygen canister – its elastic straps come free at the second attempt. I lay it by me, more for something to do than because I’m short of breath.
‘Look, Ivo, I’ve wanted to talk to you about everything since mum’s funeral,’ she says, working two fingers at her temple and closing her eyes. ‘I thought it might bring us together, I really meant to talk with you, but you never–’
She croaks as she reaches out for words, but none come.
‘You’re my sister,’ I say. The words emerge ultra quiet. ‘It is supposed to mean something. You weren’t there. For me.’
‘I didn’t–’
‘You went with him. The one time I needed you to stand by me and support me, you made your choice. You disappeared off with him.’
‘I wanted to support you, I did. But I had to make a choice.’
‘You weren’t there for Mum either, when she needed you.’
‘I couldn’t do it. There was no way,’ she says, with real desperation. ‘You and her were always close, but I didn’t have that with her. She hated me some days.’
‘She never hated you.’
‘Some days.’
I look away. I don’t know what I remember from those days.
My heart is pounding. It’s pounding, pounding. All the meaning of the last decade and more hangs in the air between us, undivined.
‘There were years – six years he was in prison. I was on my own,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t see me, would you? You wouldn’t see anyone.’
‘I saw Mum.’
‘Mum was scared to talk to you about anything that might upset you. She thought she’d push you away. But the few times I talked to her, she just said she wanted us all to be together again.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ I know, I know.
‘But it didn’t happen, did it? She never got to see that happen. And that’s not all my fault.’
A great burning swell of acid regret rises now. I’m so sorry, Mum. I could have tried harder. I should have done better.
The tension breaks and we sit there in silence a while. After everything, I don’t want to blame her for stuff that’s not her fault.
‘I’m not blameless,’ I say, quietly. ‘I never claimed I was blameless.’
‘No, nor me,’ she says. ‘Poor Mum.’
‘Poor Mum.’
And so very easily Laura tips once more into tears. Thick, wet silence, and there’s nothing I can do. I’m just going to have to let the arc rise, rise, and slowly crest and descend, slowly slowly descend again until she comes back to earth.
‘Er – hello.’
I look up at the doorway, and there he is. Kelvin himself.
‘Oh, hello,’ mumbles Laura, working at her nostril with a tissue. ‘Come in.’
Kelvin glances over at me. I look away. He shuffles a metre or so inside the door, technically in. Look at him, loving the job of chauffeuring Laura around. Designed to be a lackey for her. In the hope that maybe one day she’ll fall into his arms.
‘So how are we doing?’ he says with a falsely light air.
‘We’re – talking,’ says Laura. ‘When I can stop bursting into tears.’
Kelvin roots around in his wax-jacket pocket for a clean tissue. ‘Here you go.’
Laura takes it – sense of some intimacy between them? I don’t know. What do I know? It’s been ten years. None of my business.
‘Have you asked him?’ Kelvin says to Laura.
She shakes her head.
‘What?’ I say.
‘I brought her here for a reason, mate. I know you didn’t want to see her, and I’ll take the blame for that. But there’s a reason.’
‘A few of us – well, we’ve been supporting Mal, these last f
ew years,’ says Laura. She looks up at the ceiling and exhales again with the effort of everything. ‘Giving him help and support through prison. We did a lot of visiting, helped prepare him for coming home. But he’s struggled. He has struggled.’
Kelvin nods, sagely.
‘He’s got himself a bit of a habit – drugs, you know. Impossible to avoid in prison, they’re everywhere. So he leans heavily on me and his dad and mum. He can’t really hold down a job yet. But we try to understand, and we can put up with all that. And–’ she smiles now, with some kind of pride ‘–it’s working. It’s definitely working, because he’s been starting to get himself sorted, and – well, there’s been some real hope for him. But–’ she looks down at her knees, and stops mid-flow.
‘There’s the thing with you, Ivo,’ says Kelvin.
‘It’s there, every day,’ says Laura. ‘It’s a big knot.’
‘All he wants to do,’ says Kelvin, ‘is have the chance of setting the record straight.’
Laura leans forward and puts a hand on my bedcover. I feel the vibration. ‘Just to have five minutes of your time. You were like the brother he never had. He really used to look up to you. He still does.’
I ignore the obvious clichés and bullshit; it’s as much as I can do to hold in a laugh. We fall to an awkward silence, but no: I don’t want to let it settle in.
‘I can’t see him,’ I say.
Their heads both do the same: lift to some kind of internal music. Some pre-agreed strategy.
‘I can’t, I can’t do that. I can’t see him.’
Kelvin contemplates me a moment, and draws in a great and steadying breath. ‘Listen, mate,’ he says, ‘I know you don’t want to hear it, but he’s up to the eyeballs in regret. He knows he’s done wrong, and he’s full of remorse about it. And he’s – he’s got no way of getting rid of it.’
I turn away. Look out of the window. Look at the magnolia tree.
Laura peers up at me nervously. One of her eyelids sticks shut briefly. ‘You wouldn’t even have to say anything. You could maybe let him say what he has to say, and he’ll go.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘No.’
‘Please – five minutes, I swear that’s all it would need. Please just give him five minutes of your time.’
I draw myself up, and cough at the effort, but I need to get up the presence to combat this. Finally, finally, something inside me breaks. ‘When is it, right, when is it that this will just fucking leave me alone?’