by RL McKinney
She gave him a blank stare, as though her excursion was already forgotten. ‘Where would I go?’
Waking the next morning, he felt ambivalence lying over him like damp wool. From the pillow he could see heavy clouds, pending rain. The day would be easier if he could simply pull the covers over his head and go back to sleep. But his brain was rattling to work, churning out anxieties on a relentless assembly line. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of switching it off without chemical help.
The community nurse had given him a stack of leaflets, which he found on his bedside table beneath an empty whisky tumbler, a packet of ibuprofen tablets and a pair of off-the-shelf reading glasses. He turned onto his side and stared at this collection as the morning litany of bad news gurgled out of the radio, extracted his arm from beneath his pillow, reached for a leaflet and squinted at it. What to Expect When Your Loved One Has Dementia. He put on the glasses and read a page or two. The language was gentle, reassuring, patronising in the extreme. Advice tidily presented with bullet points:
Dementia is an illness, for which there is currently no cure. However, with appropriate support and sometimes medication, a person with dementia can maintain a fulfilling life.
Be patient and accept your loved one’s condition. Try not to subject them to additional stress or frustration by asking them to ‘snap out of it’ or ‘pull themselves together’.
Encourage them to maintain an active lifestyle. Even small activities, such as taking a walk or tidying the house can help maintain mental function.
Soft-focus photographs of a smiling white-haired lady reading to a blue-eyed child. Calum crumpled the paper in his fist and chucked it across the room. The next leaflet informed him about a lunch club for vulnerable elderly individuals and the third invited him to join a self-help support group for carers in the Lochaber area: a fifty-mile round trip for an hour-long meeting. The nurse had called this wastage of trees literature. Literature was art. It was poetry, it was the human condition unwrapped and delivered on a bed of beautiful words. This was only instruction about how to make the withering of a life slightly less unbearable.
Just like that, his mother had become a patient or worse, a service user, and he had become a carer. Their names and life stories were as dispensable as Mary’s fading memories. They were to be labelled and pigeonholed, not particularly to be helped but to be categorised by some number cruncher in an office up in Inverness. And so he lay there reading his leaflets through the cheap glasses – because he refused to admit that he needed them enough to pay for a proper prescription – with a sore head, a list of aches in various parts of his body and what felt like rats gnawing at his gut.
Mary was up and about already; she rose early and had a surprising store of energy in the morning. He could hear her shuffling between her bedroom and the bathroom, the water going on and off, cupboard doors creaking open and bumping closed again. She seemed happier and less paranoid now that she was back in the home of her childhood, but also more confused than ever. Time seemed to have collapsed in on itself and people long dead walked in and out of her consciousness without causing her much distress. Your da will help you mend the wall in the back field, she would say, or I really ought to bring some soup round to Iain. I haven’t seen him in days. Mostly she pottered and made work for herself, reorganising drawers in his kitchen so that neither of them could find anything afterwards, deadheading flowers and clipping newspaper articles about obscure events that captured her interest. Sometimes she called Finn’s name and looked displeased to see the other son appear, or called him Finn directly and tutted when Calum corrected her. Sometimes he didn’t have the heart to correct her. Nobody could predict how long it could go on this way; she could remain relatively stable for quite a while or she could deteriorate quickly. Medication might keep her lucid for a period of time, or it might not.
He took off his glasses and lay there for another couple of minutes, his palms pressed into his eyes. His skull felt just a little too tight. Too much whisky before bed, to quiet his nerves after Mary’s jaunt up the road.
He waited until he heard her descend the stairs before getting up and going into the bathroom himself. It was her lifelong habit to leave it immaculate after her morning ablutions, and she still did so with competence. So there were some small perks to her being here, he supposed, as he ran hot water into the sink and lathered shaving foam onto his face.
Shaved and dressed, he started down the stairs and paused halfway, distracted by the unexpected sound of singing. His left foot swung out into the air and threatened to pull him forward face first. Blood rushed in his ears as he caught himself and descended the rest of the way more slowly. At the bottom he stopped and glanced back up the stairs, which from below looked normal and unthreatening, and then stood and listened for a moment.
Mary was singing. He walked softly along the corridor and leaned in the kitchen door behind her. She stood at the stove with her back to him, stirring porridge. As a young woman, she had supplemented her schoolteacher’s salary by performing at folk clubs, festivals and weddings. Mostly now she hummed wordless melodies, and it was rare to hear her sing like this anymore, fully articulating a set of lyrics. It surprised him that she could still remember them, and he supposed the knowledge must reside somewhere in the deepest core of her brain, where the disease had not yet penetrated. It would be the same reason he could still play the fiddle when he was too drunk to walk.
‘That was bonny, Mum.’ He stepped up beside her and took two bowls down from the cupboard.
She faced him, unsmiling, and replied in Gaelic. ‘You were eavesdropping.’
‘Is that a bad thing?’
‘Can a person not have a little privacy in her own kitchen? What time did you arrive? Isn’t it a bit early for a visit?’
He felt his eyebrows lift. ‘I live here. You know this is my house now, Mum, don’t you?’
She pointed the porridge spoon at him, her face colouring abruptly. The anger came so quickly, from nowhere. ‘My father built this house with his own hands, and I’ll not have you displace me from my own home.’
So the Fort William flat, which she had insisted on buying after Dad died, had already fallen by the wayside. It was beginning to feel like he’d be stuck with her for the duration, and he silently cursed Johnny and Abby for talking him into having her at all.
He patted her arm and she swung it away. Since her stay in hospital, she had acquired a dislike of being touched. Another development he had to accommodate.
‘Nobody’s displacing you, don’t worry. Please just try to remember that I live here too. You’ve still got your flat, but this is the only home I’ve got. And can you please speak English?’
She still looked doubtful, but obliged and changed languages. ‘When did you leave Texas?’
‘California.’
‘You were in Texas, Calum.’
‘Aye, before California. And I’ve been back here five years, Ma.’
‘You told me you were only taking a break.’
‘Well it turned out to be a permanent break.’
‘And you just … walked away from that lovely girl. What was her name again?’
‘Michelle.’
‘Oh, yes. Such a beautiful figure she had. Whatever possessed you to leave her?’
‘She was the one who … ’
‘I had a figure like that when I was young, you know. But I did always wonder, Calum, were her breasts real? I’ve never seen breasts as firm as that.’
She was not laughing, and he tried not to. ‘Ehm … they might have had some help. Before she met me, I hasten to add. Bloody hell, Mum.’
‘Language, please.’
‘Sorry.’ He drew his fingers over his lips. ‘I’m working down in Acharacle again today. I’ll be finished up by the middle of the afternoon.’
‘That’s fine, dear. I’ve only made enough porridge for myself, I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘You have it.’
&nbs
p; ‘No, you have this. I’ll make more.’ She tasted the porridge and switched off the hob, dished out his bowl and carried it to the table, then came back with brown sugar and milk in a warmed jug. Another of her ingrained routines. Never underestimate the importance of table manners, she used to say to him and Finn as they threw toast down their throats or drank milk from the bottle on their way out the door. Calum ate and ran through a mental list of tasks to finish off the Acharacle job.
‘Before you go, would you get out a set of steps and a long-handled brush?’
He paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth and looked up at her. ‘What for?’
‘I want to make a start on the cobwebs in the byre.’
‘Mum … ’
‘They’re terribly inflammatory, Calum, you really shouldn’t let them accumulate like that.’
‘Inflammable.’
‘Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. You’ve let that byre get into a terrible state.’
‘You said inflammatory.’
‘I know the difference between inflammable and inflammatory.’ She shook her head and huffed. ‘I don’t believe your hearing is as good as it used to be, Son.’
I don’t believe your mind is as good as it used to be, Mother. ‘I need the steps, and I’d rather the spiders stayed where they are, eating midges. Honestly Mum, you don’t have to work for your keep, right? Put your feet up and relax.’
She didn’t offer a reply to this, but sipped her tea and fixed him with an accusatory stare. As soon as he finished his porridge, she took his empty bowl from his hand, scrubbed it in the basin she’d already filled with soapy water, wiped it dry. ‘Can I make you a bit of bacon?’
‘No thanks.’ He refilled his coffee, made a cheese and pickle sandwich for his lunch and put the kettle on again to make tea for his flask. Mary buzzed around behind him, wiping up crumbs and washing up.
‘There’s a woman in Donald’s back garden,’ she said from the sink. ‘I’ve never seen her before.
He glanced out. Julie was outside, digging a new bed at the side of the house, driving the spade deep into the earth with the heel of her purple welly. How very like her not to tell him she was coming back.
‘It’s Julie. She moved in a few years ago.’
‘No, I’ve never seen her. Who is she?’
‘Julie Morrison. She’s … a friend of mine.’
‘English. Another incomer.’
‘She’s from Glasgow.’
‘The Highlands have become a holiday theme park. Overrun with tourists.’
‘We need them. Julie isn’t a tourist anyway. She lives here, most of the time. Sometimes she goes back down for work. She’s a sculptor.’ He turned away before she could argue, screwed the flask closed and shoved it into a rucksack along with his sandwich box. ‘I’ve got to go, Mum. You’ll be okay? I’ve left Bert and Georgie’s number by the phone. If there’s any problem, call them.’
She stood there winding her hands in a tea towel as he tied up his boots. ‘Your Da’s Cousin Seumas was killed on the road home from Acharacle. His brakes went out on the brae at Ardmolich.’
Calum straightened and looked at her. Like Cousin Seumas, Finn went out the door to go climbing another day, not so very many years later, and never came home. Was she thinking of him too, or was it just a shapeless fear that she couldn’t name?
‘I’ll drive carefully,’ he said and kissed her cheek.
‘Stop that.’ She swiped her hand over her face. ‘I don’t like that.’
It was a shameful relief to close the door on her.
WATER
There was so much water. It spilled from a saturated sky, overflowed the small burns that cut the hillsides, gathered into larger streams and then into torrents; it raged over rocks, pooled in ruts at the side of the road. The rain came on as Catriona waited for the bus in Fort William and showed no sign of stopping as they travelled west. The window steamed until the landscape outside dissolved into a wash of green and grey, and the tears that she had been spilling for weeks now were indistinguishable from the rest.
The bus trundled on through the rain, through a country she had lived in all her life but couldn’t claim to know. Holidays with her Mum had mostly been Spanish packages, and although her Dad’s family were all West Highlanders, she’d never been out here before. She’d never seen the place where he was born and grew up. As they cleared Fort William and its outlying villages, the hills became steeper, the cottages more remote. The soggy greenness was oppressive. What did everyone do out here for fun? Maybe they all died young of extreme boredom. Maybe that was why there were so few houses.
There were worse things than boredom. She had to remind herself of that. Maybe some time away from people was what she needed. Maybe being out here where she didn’t have to talk to anyone would help reduce the inflammation of her brain inside her skull. Lately it had been like a bowling ball in her head, rolling from one side to another, grinding everything else to powder. There was no structure left to hang her thoughts on so they swirled like dust around a fan, impossible to pin down.
They turned south at Lochailort and the rain thrummed onto the surface of the loch, pocking the grey-black water. Small boats listed drunkenly and gulls stood still on humps of kelp-swathed rock, waiting for better flying conditions. She cracked the window. The outside air suggested rotting seaweed and wet animals.
They followed the road south until the coast opened up, revealing a bay and a view to islands she couldn’t name, blurry beyond the screen of rain. A sign announced their arrival in Glendarach. The bus pulled in and she stepped off alone into the rain, beside a ramshackle cabin that seemed to be a shop of some kind. It was closed now. She wondered if it ever opened. The bus rumbled off and she pulled the hood of her sweatshirt lower over her forehead.
The village, such as it was, spread along a single-track road at the head of the bay. Catriona walked up the road, past a pub, a community hall and a few dirty white cottages. A couple of boats sat on their hulls, waiting for the tide to float them again. There was a tiny church tucked into the woods. Sheep stood in a muddy field, accepting their miserable lot in life as sheep and too many people do. The rain soaked through her cotton sleeves, chilled her skin and dribbled down her back. Everything in the rucksack would be completely soaked.
His house had to be on this road, but she had no idea how far along. All she could do was keep going, getting colder by the minute. A forest of gnarled oaks and birches gathered around the road, trees made small and crippled by their exposed existence. They thinned again to reveal a tiny beach: a crescent of pale sand fringed by a spill of sea-rounded rocks, a hummock of land further out with a channel of grey water in front of it. More grounded boats. To her left, opposite the beach, were two cottages. One was dark grey stone, with white-painted lintels. An upturned yellow kayak lay beside a separate outbuilding. The second cottage was smaller, the front wall decorated with shells in swirling wave patterns. Catriona lingered for a moment, trying to conjure some sense of familiarity. The grey house was Calum’s, she was sure of it. She’d seen photographs of this beach, the yellow kayak, these cottages.
All she had to do was knock on the door, but her legs refused to carry her up the drive. Anyway, there were no cars around and it didn’t look like anyone was home. She was shivering, drowning slowly but surely.
She walked back up the road and went into the pub. It was empty apart from the woman behind the bar and a couple at a table by the window.
‘Can I have a cup of tea, please?’ Catriona asked. She no longer trusted the promises of alcohol.
‘Of course you can, darling,’ said the bar woman. She seemed amused by Catriona’s bedraggled appearance. ‘It’s a bit damp out there.’
Catriona wanted to cry. ‘A bit.’
‘Have a seat by the stove and dry off. I’ll bring it over to you.’
‘Thanks.’ She wondered if she should ask the woman about Calum, but couldn’t bring herself to speak anymore. Every
time she opened her mouth, she was afraid of what might come out. She might vomit. She might scream. She might spill a gutful of snakes and beetles onto the bar.
Maybe once she’d warmed up a little.
She sat and held her hands towards the woodstove. A black and white collie padded towards her, sniffed at her, let her bury her fingers in its hair for a moment, then wandered off. Catriona peeled off her hoodie and draped it over the end of the bench table nearest the fire, where it began to steam. She wondered how long the rain could go on.
FIVE YEARS
As he drove south, past Kinlochmoidart and up the steep hill where Cousin Seumas had crashed out of the game, Calum thought about the randomness of the things Mary remembered. Why, for example, did she remember Michelle at all, when they’d only met on a handful of occasions and never got to know each other well? To Calum, it felt like Michelle belonged to another man’s past. He could go weeks without thinking of her. Occasionally he missed her, but it wasn’t a sorrowful missing anymore, just a minor nostalgia for a phase of his life that was gone.
It was even funnier that Mary remembered her augmented breasts. They certainly didn’t top the list of things he missed. They sat on Michelle’s narrow body like pincushions on a board, and he’d always been a bit afraid of them. You didn’t want to massage or manipulate too much; things might get pushed out of place. What he did miss was the vitality of her passions: sailing, skiing, dancing, travelling, eating, love-making. He missed her lust for sensation and novelty. He missed feeling like they could afford to buy as much adventure as they wanted. Living with Michelle had been a long hit of cocaine, an addiction with a bastard of a comedown.
*
Ventura, California, 2009
The house was dark, blinds drawn against the afternoon sun. He pushed the front door closed, let his bag flop onto the terracotta tiles and paused to tune in to the noises of an empty house. The air conditioning hummed even though Michelle was at work; the wall clock in the living room ticked. He went to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of Anchor Steam out of the fridge, twisted the cap off and sat at the breakfast bar. Outside, waves of heat radiated up from the bleached patio and the eucalyptus trees stirred in a dry wind. The air was murky with smoke from the wildfires in the hills out east. It stung his eyes, even indoors.