by David Thorne
My mother’s room has a large picture window at the end, stretching from floor to ceiling and almost from wall to wall; the garden, which the room overlooks, feels part of the room itself. There are polished hardwood floorboards and a flat-screen television attached to one of the white walls on an ugly black frame. In the centre of the room is my mother’s bed, huge and with the clean plastic-and-tubular-metal lines of an artefact from the set of a science-fiction film. She is plugged into a drip that feeds a clear liquid from a plastic bag down into the back of her hand, and next to her a machine displays numbers and lights on a blank black screen. Another machine the size of a photocopier lurks next to it; I hate to imagine what its purpose might be. I am sitting on a dining chair next to the bed, bent forward, watching her. I have been here for hours.
Mr Latimer told me that my mother had already survived pancreatic cancer once, that she had put up a courageous fight and had beaten it through force of character despite the doctors initially giving her little chance. But five years later it had returned with an aggression that even my mother’s tenacity and bravery could not face down and had quickly metastasised, reaching her kidneys and stomach. She needs dialysis daily, morphine rather more often, he explained to me. She is as comfortable as possible but I believe that she exists in a pain-filled purgatory nobody should have to endure. Anybody who disputes the rights of the individual to a dignified end should be forced to witness the degradation of body and spirit that cancer can visit on a person. It is shabby, humiliating and cruel.
My mother is asleep, a thin woman with greying hair fanned out on the pillow, a fine proud nose made all the more prominent for the wasted sockets of her eyes and lined, pinched cheeks. She is breathing but only just, her blanket rising almost imperceptibly as if she is a small animal playing dead. She is emaciated, tiny, and I cannot conceive of how a brute like me could have emerged from something so insubstantial. I look out of the vast window and can see a squirrel darting in spasmodic jerks down the trunk of a large conifer.
‘Is it you?’ Her voice is a whisper, the wind in the trees.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ I say as gently as I can.
She sighs, lies quiet. Watching her, I have the impression of a desperate skeleton crew rallying somewhere within her core, a marshalling of final reserves inside some fading, corroded, fleshy engine room. She does not have much left to give but whatever still lingers, I sense, she wants to save for me. I regard her, her eyes closed, and can see only a failing mechanism that has experienced too much careless and rough usage over its lifetime. That it has survived this long, unbroken or at least still limping along, is already, I believe, remarkable.
Then her eyes open and, suddenly, everything changes. My mother’s eyes are dark and intelligent and human and filled with a tender warmth that makes my nostrils and throat swell and I experience a dizzy feeling as if I am freefalling back through the dismal years of my loveless life, back into a lap I have never sat on, into arms that have never held me, eyes that have never laughed with me. I absently notice that tears are running down my cheeks and that it is a sensation I cannot recall. She regards me with a look of adoration and wonder as a young woman would her mewling new-born child and I realise that here, lying on the bed, is truly my mother, a woman who has loved me and not stopped loving me, devotedly, sorrowfully, for nearly forty years. I can conceive of nothing so glorious and, at the same time, so unutterably sad and desolate. The sudden thought of all those years of grief, which could, which should have been filled with happiness, threatens to derail me completely. I do not know how to act or what to say.
But I believe that my mother knows what I am thinking and she smiles at me and, although the smile has some sadness, it is tempered by an emotion in her eyes that I think may be joy.
‘Daniel. Oh, my son, yes. It was worth the wait.’
I try to imagine just how overwhelming it must be for my mother to be confronted with the thirty-seven-year-old reality of somebody she has, for all those years, only imagined as a new-born boy. My ingrained insecurities immediately trouble me; I worry that she will see a rough, unlovable creature, a grotesque substitute for the innocent and vulnerable child of her memory. Under the scrutiny of my mother’s eyes, I am all too aware of how I appear to others, the intimidating and unapproachable air that I project; how can she be anything but disappointed?
‘I am so sorry,’ she says.
‘For what?’
‘She told me you were dead.’
‘Who did?’
But my mother does not answer. She is still looking at me almost reverentially, a miracle she dare not believe. I have never before been looked at like this but it causes me no discomfort or self-consciousness; I have never felt so liberated from myself. I gaze back at my mother and, although she looks tired and weak, I can still see traces in her face of the life, the vivacity that shone through in her photos.
She reaches out a hand, the hand that does not have the drip in the back, and I take it. It feels like a cloth just beginning to harden from lack of water, light and flimsy. It lies in mine and from the discrepancy in size we could be two different species.
‘You grew,’ she says.
‘Everybody does.’
‘So much. Are you married?’
‘No.’
She sighs audibly now, a regretful ‘Haaa’ fading away quickly from lack of breath. But she has the strength to wrap her small fingers around the sides of mine and squeeze them softly. She has an accent, which only makes her stranger to me; she is my mother and is holding my hand but still we have a chasm to cross, of years and of grief.
‘Harold had such a hard time to tell me. About you.’
‘Harold?’
‘Mr Latimer. He worried that the shock would kill me. So long he took, to come to the point.’
‘It must have been distressing.’
‘Distressing.’ She closes her eyes, shakes her head. ‘Only the English, only they could think that for a mother to hear her child is alive, that it could be distressing. No, Daniel. It was wonderful, of course.’
‘He didn’t want to tire you. Make you unwell.’
‘So I can die not knowing my beautiful son is alive? Idiotic.’ She shakes her head again but I can see that even this conversation is costing her dearly, her chest rising and falling quickly now, her face paler even than it was when I was watching her sleep. Beautiful. She called me beautiful.
‘Can I get you anything?’ I manage to cough out past the lump in my throat.
‘Nothing. Just talk to me. I want to know everything. Everything.’
‘There’s not so much to tell.’
‘Who did you play with at school? Did you break a bone? What was your first girlfriend’s name? What is your favourite food?’ She smiles. ‘All this a mother must know.’
‘I played with Ronnie at school, when I was very young,’ I say. ‘His family moved away to Spain when I was nine. I cried for days, but alone, in my room. Nobody ever knew I even missed him.’
‘Crying is not so bad,’ she says.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I know.’ But in fact nobody has ever told me this in my life and just this, this throwaway comment said without reflection or force, gives me an idea of how enormously I missed her presence when I was young, how different my outlook could have been.
My mother’s face stiffens in pain and almost unconsciously she reaches up to a button on the tube of her drip and presses it, giving herself another dose of morphine. Her eyes close as if she is at a classical concert anticipating a particular passage of music and when it arrives her face slackens and when she looks at me again her eyes have lost some of their brilliant focus.
I swallow. ‘How long have you got?’ It is one of the hardest things I have ever said and I dread the answer. Please let it be months, not weeks.
‘How long have I got?’ She laughs gently, with not a trace of self-pity. ‘Oh, Daniel, I have the rest of my life.’
I sit and hold her hand and watch her
fall asleep, her breathing slowing, her face settling back into the drawn lines that seemed to have disappeared when she spoke to me. I wonder at what she has been through, what she has suffered before finding herself here, helpless in this glorious room. Some people’s histories are so painful, so wretched, that contemplating them is as difficult as looking at an open wound; the mind flinches away, just as our eyes would confronted by the raw stump of a child’s arm. I cannot bear to imagine how terrible my mother’s life must have been. I lack the courage.
Mrs Latimer knocks on the door; she is carrying a tray on which is a cup of tea and plate of biscuits – the least, and yet the most, the polite middle classes can muster in a situation like this. I get up from my chair, take the tray from her and set it on the floor.
‘She has woken?’
‘I spoke to her.’
‘She was pleased.’
‘I think so.’
Mrs Latimer nods. ‘Harold did not mean to dictate to you, Mr Connell.’
‘Daniel.’
‘He cares, that is all. Marcela is a member of our family and you cannot blame him for perhaps being overprotective.’
‘I understand.’
‘Penny, when she lost her child… I could do nothing. She was so inconsolable. Marcela, she… She has a gift. With other people. God knows why, after the life that she has had.’
‘She seems happy here.’
‘Happy? No. No, Daniel, I don’t think happy would be the right word. She found a measure of peace, perhaps. I believe that her history rather precluded happiness.’
‘And now?’
Mrs Latimer smiles and I can see that she is as well meaning as anybody can be. ‘It’s rather complicated, isn’t it?’
I cannot help but smile in return. ‘Yes. Yes, it’s complicated.’
‘But, Daniel, no matter what the outcome of your visit, it is right that you are here.’
I nod, grateful for her generosity, for making me feel as welcome as she can do in her home.
‘She won’t sleep long,’ Mrs Latimer says. ‘Sit down, drink your tea. She’ll want you to be here when she wakes up.’
‘Daniel?’
She says it almost with panic, as if our meeting might have been nothing but a cruel dream.
‘I’m here.’
She sighs in relief and pleasure, but does not open her eyes. It is evening now and it is just gloomy enough outside that the vast window is caught between a view of the outside and a reflection of our room. I have been watching her for a couple of hours, pacing the floor, looking down into the garden. Being alone has never been easy for me, I am not good at introspection; dwelling on my past never gives me any pleasure. But having my mother here gives me some comfort, softens and takes the edge off my thoughts; it is almost as if her existence casts a benign shadow over my history. I cannot explain it; perhaps it is as simple as the discovery that deep in my DNA exists another personality than my father’s and that personality is good. Apparently I am not beyond redemption.
‘Was he good to you? A good father?’
My mother asks the question with her eyes still closed and I take my time to consider the question. How should I answer? The truth is so miserable that it can only add a new layer of pain to everything my mother has already had to endure. Yet I have an almost irresistible urge to tell her all, to let out the loneliness and fear of my childhood.
But of course I cannot; already she feels culpable for having left me, despite believing that I was dead. To know that not only did she abandon me but that she also left me at the mercy of an abusive brute would be too much. The least I can do is spare her this.
‘He was wonderful,’ I say, trying to inject sincerity and levity into my voice. ‘Perhaps a little unconventional, but he was a good parent.’
‘Really?’ My mother is looking at the ceiling, rather than meet my eyes.
‘He retrained,’ I say. How do these lies come so easily? ‘As a plumber. Worked his fingers to the bone to put me through school and university.’
‘You went to university?’
‘University College. London. It’s, a…’ I do not wish to patronise her, but a mother deserves some reflected glory. ‘It’s a good college. I took a degree in Law.’
Now my mother turns to me, tears of pride in her eyes. ‘You are a lawyer?’
‘Yes. In the City.’ I shrug. ‘I was a good student. I found it easy.’
At least this is true; at least she can find genuine pleasure in my academic prowess. I suspect that my intelligence all came from this woman; it is her I have to thank for any success I have had.
My mother lets out a long breath and a beatific smile lights her face. ‘So, you did not need me. Oh, you cannot know how much of a relief it is. I am so happy, Daniel.’
I did not need her? If she only knew. Again, I fight the urge to lay my past down in front of her, to beg her to reassure me that it was not my fault, that whatever I went through was due to circumstance and not some fundamental defect in my character. God, this is hard.
‘My son, a lawyer,’ she says in wonderment. ‘Oh goodness.’
There is a wardrobe in the corner of the room, on the back wall next to the door. Above a rail of clothes there is a shelf and on that shelf there is a box. I take it down; it is black and once contained shoes.
‘This one?’
‘Yes. Bring it to me.’
My mother has a remote control attached to a wire and she has pressed a button and the upper half of the bed has raised so that she is now sitting almost upright. I walk back to the bed and place the box on her lap and she takes the lid off. She takes out a folded piece of paper; a newspaper cutting in an old-fashioned font. She passes it to me.
‘I am sorry, Daniel. She gave me this.’
‘Who did?’
‘Xynthia. When I came down to find you.’
‘You came?’
My mother looks at me curiously. ‘But of course I came. I am your mother.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as I could. I saved some money, I ran from that Irish man, I came back to get you.’ She laughs in quiet consternation. ‘You think I would leave you for ever?’
I open the newspaper cutting and read it. It is the story of a child who was drowned in a paddling pool at his home. The child is not named; a toddler from my neighbourhood.
‘She told you this was me?’
‘And then I gave up, of course. I went back to the Irish man. Where else could I go? It was what I deserved.’
‘No.’
‘A mother who lets her son die, like that? Oh yes, Daniel, I do think so.’
‘But back there? To all that?’
‘It wasn’t so bad. Really.’
My mother lies back on her pillow and I look at myself in the dark window, which now reflects the entire room; my head and shoulders appear over my mother’s bed, which is closer to the glass. I cannot see past it and perhaps it is right that it is hidden from me, that I cannot peer into the darkness and see and understand the full horror of what lies there. I have spared my mother the truth of my childhood; now she is returning the favour. But perhaps nothing matters beyond the window; perhaps all that is important is in this room. Why look further? I reach over to my mother and brush her hair away from her face, her skin dry and cold as if she has just come in from outside. She smiles and reaches up a hand, holds my wrist lightly. I think I can stay like this for ever, even though at the same time I know that it cannot last.
I am in the kitchen of the Latimers’ house and Mr Latimer is making me coffee; he is inept but I understand that he is going out of his way, showing me that he, a stranger, cares for me in some measure. He realises that I am meeting my dying mother and that it can be no easy experience, and that it is one I am facing alone. With some difficulty he presses the plunger of the cafetière down; I could help him but sense that he would be mortified. He is wearing a fluffy dark-blue dressing gown and leather slippers and the light is pouring in through t
he kitchen’s leaded windows and on to his white hair, giving him a halo. I stayed most of the night by my mother’s side and, though she drifted in and out of consciousness and we did not speak much, I know that I was a comfort to her; she slept with a smile on her face. I caught a couple of hours’ sleep in the prim single bed of the room the Latimers have left at my disposal.
‘Get much sleep?’
‘Some. Not much.’
‘How was her night?’ Mr Latimer sits down next to me at the table and I can see the sadness in his eyes, too. It occurs to me that perhaps he will grieve for my mother just as much as, if not more than, I will; I realise that I have been remarkably selfish and that not only do I pose a threat to my mother’s health and wellbeing, but also that I have stolen some of my mother away from him, after all that he has done for her.
‘She seemed well. At peace, maybe.’
Mr Latimer nods at his hands clasped on his lap. He clears his throat and begins, ‘Mr Connell, I am sorry if I seemed overly zealous, regarding your mother’s wellbeing…’
I stop him. ‘Mr Latimer, given the situation, I believe you have behaved entirely correctly. Please, this is easy for nobody. You and your wife are being more than welcoming. I doubt I would be as gracious, in your situation.’
‘Yes, well.’ He gets up and pours coffee into two cups. The silence is awkward but there is nothing more to be said. He turns to me.
‘Sugar?’
The Latimers’ garden is enormous and takes hours to mow, but my mother is having dialysis, her blood being cleaned by a machine that Mr Latimer bought himself at a cost I imagine must have been enormous and I would rather be somewhere else, occupied. There seems something brutal and desperate in the idea of her blood being taken away, rudimentarily filtered and then pumped back into her by a humming piece of equipment. Apparently you cannot hire them and he refused to consider a machine that had already been used. With each passing hour, the devotion and love he has for my mother becomes clearer. Perhaps, after the horrors of her youth, my mother found her guardian angel.