by Green, Linda
I sat Mum down in her armchair and took the secateurs from her without her seeming to register the fact. Her shrivelled hands lay meekly on the armrests. Sometimes I could still see the outline of Mum’s plump body surrounding her, a ghost-like image of her former self. It was ironic really. All those years she’d spent battling her weight and now, finally, she was positively skeletal. Only she didn’t have the mental faculties to appreciate it.
‘I’ll put kettle on,’ I said. There was no reply. I wasn’t even sure if it had registered. But I left the room and filled the kettle anyway, letting the whooshing sound of the water wash over me, blocking out the noise of the silence. I thought of her as two different people now. The mum I had grown up with: strong, funny, feisty. And the one who sat in the front room: someone completely unrelated. Someone who’d taken her place, not overnight but by stealth over the past few years. And now refused to leave.
I didn’t bother with the teapot. There was a time, not too long ago, when I couldn’t get away with it. When she’d have pottered out here after me to make sure I’d put the cosy on. Checked the bin for tell-tale signs of teabags. Or taken one sip and accused me of crimes against loose-leaf tea. These days she drank what she was given without a whimper of complaint. How I’d love now to be able to use the word cantankerous against her.
I went back into the front room, placed her cup of tea down on the occasional table next to her chair and put my own coffee mug on the mantelpiece. She didn’t appear to have moved a millimetre since I’d left her.
‘How’s your arm feeling? Has it been giving you any trouble?’
‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’
‘You broke it, remember? When you fell. That’s why you were in hospital.’
‘No. I’ve never broken a bone in me life. You must be thinking of Deborah. She broke both arms, she did. Not at same time, mind.’
I hesitated, unsure whether to put her right or let it go.
‘It’s been mild today, hasn’t it?’ I said.
‘Roses will need pruning soon.’
‘They’re fine, Mum. You’ve done them already.’
I had a feeling that there would be no rose bushes left at this rate. She made Edward Scissorhands look positively slovenly in the pruning department.
I waited for something which didn’t come. An opening gambit of conversation, a comment on something she’d heard on the news. So instead I filled the space. Telling her about what Alice was up to, how her animal hospital of cuddly toys was threatening to engulf her entire bedroom, how Paul’s school was having an Ofsted inspection the next day (although I didn’t mention how I shouldn’t really be there because Paul had a stack of work to get through). How the council were planning to get rid of the lollipop lady outside Alice’s school and how we were going to fight it.
‘Your school had a lollipop lady,’ Mum said. ‘Do you remember her? Deborah always used to call her Mrs Tiggywinkle. Her name was Mrs Tingle really.’
She always did this. Just when you thought there was no one at home, that all the lights had gone out.
‘Yeah. I do remember her,’ I said. ‘Short, skinny woman with silver hair.’
‘You’ll have to ask Deborah if she can remember what she used to call her.’
I looked down at the carpet. The lights may have flickered for a moment, but they were clearly off again now.
‘I’ll put the television on for you before I go,’ I said. ‘Might be something nice on a Sunday afternoon.’
I wondered if Alice would have to do this for me one day. And if she would feel as bad as I did. More than anything, I hoped she would not have to cope with it on her own.
‘I’m sorry, love. I know you’re up to your eyes in it tonight. But it’s … er, that time again.’
Paul looked up from the pile of papers on his desk in the spare room. It took a second for his eyes to focus on me, a few more for the penny to drop and a moment longer for the smile to creep across his face.
‘Jeez, you work a bloke hard. Do you think inspectors will let me include that in my mitigation? “Sorry my assessment sheets weren’t fully completed only my wife needed me for procreation purposes.”’
I smiled. Any romance or spontaneity had so long ago disappeared from the process that I couldn’t help but see the funny side. At least I had stopped short of leaving my positive ovulation sticks in obvious places where he would see them. I knew of several women on the fertility website forums who admitted to doing just that.
‘Well, you’ll be glad to hear that unlike Ofsted I will not be grading your performance or publishing it on a website for public scrutiny.’
‘Bloody glad to hear it.’
‘Hey,’ I said, sidling up to Paul and putting my arms around him. ‘I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the idea. I might have given you an outstanding.’
‘I could say summat,’ said Paul. ‘But I’m not going to. I don’t want to be accused of lowering tone.’
‘Good. I’ll give you five minutes to finish off then.’
Paul smiled and kissed me on the forehead. If he did resent my persistence, he was very good at not letting it show.
We lay there afterwards, Paul’s body, warm and sticky next to mine, me with a couple of pillows shoved under my hips, attempting to look as sexy and laid back as is possible while trying to stop sperm spilling out of you.
‘Well, I think your effort and application to duty were outstanding,’ I said.
Paul shook his head. ‘I just hope Ofsted inspectors are equally fulsome in their praise.’
‘But not that they’ll be wearing a lacy camisole and hot pants, obviously.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Paul. ‘Might make it more interesting.’
I stroked his arm, well aware of the reason he had gone into comedian mode.
‘I don’t know what you’re worried about. It’s a bloody good school,’ I said. ‘Everyone knows that. That’s why you took the job, remember?’
Paul had only been there two years. His first job in a special school after years at a mainstream primary.
‘I know. I just can’t bear the thought of letting those kids down.’ I turned to look at him. The emotion clearly bubbling up behind his normally smiling blue eyes.
‘You’re a soft bugger for a Yorkshireman, Paul Crabtree. Probably why I married you, mind. The kids adore you. The parents do too. I can’t see how you could possibly have put any more into that job than you have done.’
‘Thanks, love,’ he said stroking my hair. ‘I’ll just be glad when it’s all over. When I can get back to teaching instead of worrying about bloody form-filling.’ Paul smiled at me and wiped his eyes. Took a moment or two to compose himself.
‘How was your mum? I haven’t had a chance to ask.’
‘Oh. You know.’ Paul nodded and squeezed my shoulder.
‘Look, I know you don’t want to, but maybe it’s time you did look into a home. You can’t keep going over and getting her back in house. And you can’t lock her in either.’
‘Sometimes I wish I could tether her like a goat,’ I said. ‘Just enough slack to let her get the food she needs, but not enough for her to sample the grass on the other side of the fence.’
‘Is it worth getting on to the council again? See if they can do another review of her care?’
‘I will do. I think I know what their answer will be, though. It’s not long since last one.’
It was simply a matter of putting off the inevitable, I knew that. Maybe the truth was that I didn’t want to be the one who took that decision, I wanted someone else to do it for me. After all Mum had been through, I couldn’t bear to be the one who took something away from her. Something she held so dear.
‘The thing is, you’ve got to look after yourself as well, love. This can’t be helping you.’
I knew exactly what he was getting at. I’d read enough how-to-get-pregnant books to know they all had a chapter on reducing stress. None of them, however, had a subsequent chap
ter on how you were supposed to achieve this if your mother had Alzheimer’s and refused to go into a home.
‘It’s probably something else that’s stopping it happening. At least when we go for tests we’ll find out.’
Paul went to say something, then stopped himself. It had been my idea to finally go for the tests. Paul had put me off, citing various reasons over the years: that there was no need to rush, that he wanted to enjoy Alice first, that these things took time, that we were probably trying too hard. Until eventually he’d run out of reasons why he didn’t think we should go. Apart from the obvious one that had been there all along. The one that neither of us spoke about.
‘It might not be that straightforward, remember. They can’t always give a reason for these things.’
‘Apart from us being on the wrong side of forty, you mean?’
Paul smiled. Squeezed my hand.
‘Look, if you still want to us go through with it, I will. Just as long as you know it’s not too late to change your mind.’
I smiled back at him. I loved that he wanted to protect me from the hurt. But I also knew that sometimes you couldn’t just put your fingers in your ears and sing ‘la, la, la, la’ at the top of your voice to block out something you needed to hear. Even if you didn’t have a bloody clue how you were going to react when you heard it.
The other side of the bed was empty when the alarm woke me the next morning. I knew exactly where Paul would be, though. I showered quickly, hurried downstairs and made coffee before taking a mug into him in the study.
‘Thank you, you’re a star,’ he said, looking up briefly from his paperwork and smiling.
‘So are you, remember?’ I said.
‘Are you OK getting Alice ready? I want to go in early.’ By early he meant even earlier than usual. He was always at school way before he needed to be.
‘Of course. Have you had any breakfast?’
‘No. I haven’t really got time.’ I handed him the banana I’d just put in my dressing-gown pocket.
‘Thought as much,’ I said. Paul shook his head, smiled at me and unpeeled it.
I crept into Alice’s room. I loved it that she wasn’t one of those children who woke at the crack of dawn every morning; mainly because I liked my sleep and couldn’t have hacked it, but also because it gave me a chance to have these first few quiet moments of the day with her.
I pulled up the blind, although the dreary February morning outside didn’t seem to want to come in. I lay down on the bed next to Alice, managing to squeeze myself in between the menagerie of soft toys. I used to watch her sleep all the time when she was a baby. Marvelling at her nose, her lips, her fine blonde hair. Having to pinch myself that she was mine. That something so perfect could have come from me.
Alice stirred a little, turning over and stretching her arm across me. Her warm fingers touched my neck. A few seconds later she opened her eyes, saw that I was there and promptly shut them again.
‘Morning, sweetheart,’ I whispered.
‘Have you fed Betsy yet?’ she asked, her eyes still closed. Betsy was her pet rabbit. It was actually a male rabbit, but Alice had said she didn’t like any boys’ names. Paul had suggested calling it Roger, but she’d been too young to see the film and she didn’t get the joke.
‘No, not yet.’
‘Good,’ she said, opening her eyes, ‘I’ll do it with you then.’ A second later she was up and starting to get dressed. Wherever she had got that ability to go from fast asleep to wide awake in ten seconds from, it certainly wasn’t me.
‘Where’s Daddy?’ she asked when we got to the empty kitchen.
‘He’s gone to work early. Remember I told you his school is having an inspection today? It’s like a little test.’
‘Has he learnt his spellings?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I smiled, ‘I expect he’ll come top of the class.’
She nodded and picked up the compost box in which we kept leftovers for Betsy. ‘I think for Christmas,’ she said, ‘I’d really like a donkey.’
Drama teachers had it made. To be honest, I sometimes wondered why anyone would want to teach any other subject. You got to take kids out of the classroom environment, free them from the confines of textbooks and whiteboards. It was like that moment when Angela Rippon kicked up her legs and emerged from behind the newsdesk on Morecambe and Wise. You got to see what the kids were really capable of. The surprising talents which no one else knew existed. And for much of the time you got to do it without anyone else bothering you. The Head was far too busy bearing down on the English and maths departments to interfere in what I was up to. As long as the kids put on impressive shows at Christmas and summer, I was left pretty much to my own devices. No doubt at some point Michael Gove would decide that drama teachers were surplus to requirements or would introduce minimum standards in improvisation and mime. But until that point I was simply going to keep my head down and get on with it.
Sheila, on the other hand, appeared to have the words ‘sacrificial lamb’ tattooed on her forehead. It was hard to imagine a more stressed-looking person than the one who sat opposite me in the staffroom, sipping her coffee as if she were scared a sea monster might leap out of the mug and gobble her up at any moment.
‘What’s Frodo said now?’ I asked. The Head’s name was actually Nathan Freeman. But ever since Sheila and I had both watched a BBC2 natural history programme where the dominant bonobo chimpanzee, named Frodo, had bullied the other members of the troupe into submission, he had been referred to by his ape name.
‘He hasn’t said anything. That’s the problem. He came into my classroom this morning, unannounced, stood at the back and watched for ten minutes and then left.’
‘Jeez, that’s scarier than the shower scene in Psycho.’
‘What am I going to do?’
‘Make sure you check behind the door before taking a shower?’
‘I’m serious, Jack.’ Sheila spoke in hushed tones although the other members of staff within earshot were all fellow victims.
‘I’ve told you. You need to get out of this place before he turns you into a jibbering wreck.’
‘But it’s wrong, isn’t it? The person being bullied shouldn’t be the one who has to go.’
‘Of course not. But who said life was fair?’
‘Besides, I’d miss the kids too much. I owe it to them to stand my ground. If I go, he’ll hire some joyless smart arse who drills them in grammar until they never want to pick up their pens and write again.’
‘So defy him. Teach the way you want to teach. Dare him to take you on.’
‘And what if he does?’ Sheila asked, pushing her glasses back up her nose.
‘Who do you think the kids would back if he took any action against you? They’d have a sit-in at least. Probably start up some kind of campaign. They’re the children of Guardian-reading radicals and revolutionaries, remember. They’re hardly going to stand by while you’re thrown to the slaughter.’
‘Yes, you’re right. Of course you’re right.’ Sheila’s voice had acquired a steely quality not heard for some time. She put her mug down and stood up, straightening her back and jutting out her chin as she did so. ‘Thank you.’
‘That’s OK. Although obviously if it goes horribly wrong, I’ll put my official NUT rep hat on and deny all knowledge of this conversation.’
She smiled and walked out of the staffroom, head held high. I finished my coffee, imagining myself sitting in the Head’s office writing ‘I must not encourage staff mutiny’ two hundred times.
‘Parents’ meeting in the hall in five minutes,’ I shouted across the playground. ‘Come and help us save our lollipop lady. The kids can be looked after in class two. There are no excuses.’
A steady stream of parents started making their way through to the hall. Sam turned and grinned at me, in serious danger of tripping over her long skirt in her excitement.
‘Wow, this is great,’ she said, ‘you’re making them all come.’
‘I guess it’s my persuasive charm.’
‘No. It’s because you’re bloody scary. All you need now is a loudhailer.’
I laughed. Though the truth was I did secretly hanker after one. It wasn’t that I couldn’t project my voice – when you spent your days trying to make yourself heard above thirty teenagers, that clearly wasn’t an issue. It was simply that loudhailers appeared to be de rigueur in those archived news reels of industrial unrest in the seventies and eighties. If they’d had a rabble-rousing badge in the Girl Guides, that would have been the picture on it.
‘Get me one for my birthday,’ I said, winking at her. I stood square in the middle of the gates. Anyone who wanted to escape would have to get past me first. I guessed it was a kind of reverse picket line.
‘I’d better go and check on the boys before we start,’ said Sam. ‘Make sure Oscar’s behaving himself.’
‘Can you make sure the DVD they’re showing’s not a scary one. Alice is still recovering from One Hundred and One Dalmations. I suspect I am Cruella de Vil in her nightmares.’
Sam smiled. ‘Will do.’
I walked through into the packed hall. Anna was already working the room, her dark hair sleek and stylish as ever. Her face animated as she talked to people, engaged them, put them at ease then passed them the pen and pointed to where to sign. It appeared effortless. At least on the surface.
She looked up as I walked over. ‘What a fantastic turnout,’ she said. ‘People obviously feel really strongly about this.’
I nodded, not wanting to admit that actually they hadn’t had any choice in the matter. I got the impression Anna might not agree with my ‘resistance is futile’ tactics.
‘How many signatures have we got?’ I asked.
‘Over a thousand so far. The ones we put in the shops and the library have done really well. We got a hundred signatures in the Co-op alone.’
‘Brilliant. Well done.’ Anna was also a bit of a whizz at sweet-talking business types. I guess I was John Prescott to her Tony Blair.