‘Mum?’ The shout was louder this time.
She closed her eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Martha, you know I hate this shouting up and down the stairs.’ She tapped her palm on the kitchen table, liking the sound of her wedding band on the wooden surface. ‘How many times have I told you, if you want to ask me something, come down here!’ She shook her head and returned to the article in the Weston Mercury, interested in how to get a smear-free shine on your conservatory windows with nothing more than warm water and a squirt of vinegar.
Her daughter’s footsteps thundered down the uncarpeted stairs. Jacks drew breath: how many times had she told her? Too many to count, but Martha, aged seventeen, who had lived in this house since she was born, still hadn’t mastered conversing face to face, preferring to holler from room to room. Neither, it would seem, had she learnt how to walk down the stairs without shaking the rafters.
‘Have I got a shirt for school?’ She practically bounced on the spot, her tone was urgent. It amazed Jacks that despite the fact that they left the house at 7.45 every morning and had done so for the last six years, time always seemed to sneak up on Martha like it was a shock or a deviation from the norm, each and every morning.
Jacks looked at her daughter in her tight black school skirt, thick woolly tights and pyjama top, reeking of perfume and trying to tease her roots with her fingers as she loitered in the doorway. She decided not to comment on the dark ring of black kohl that masked her daughter’s pretty blue eyes and made her heart-shaped face look top-heavy. There were only so many times she could have that conversation. Besides, when she was a lawyer, rushing up the court steps in a crisp white shirt with her briefcase full of important notes, she would surely rethink her knotty hair and over-the-top eye make-up. She would want to emulate her colleagues. Jacks smiled at the thought. Her brilliant girl, soon to take her A levels, which would put her on the path to a university education and then a dazzling career. Jacks would never forget Mrs Fentiman, the woman who had come into Martha’s school and given a talk, extolling the virtues of doing law and painting a picture so vivid, Jacks could taste the champagne with which they toasted their wins and could smell the leather-topped desk at which she sat and enjoyed a perfect view of St Paul’s Cathedral. Her suit was elegantly tailored and she wore Chanel earrings. Jacks wanted that life for Martha, all of it. She wanted Martha to go into schools and inspire girls to strive for better, she wanted her to drink flutes of champagne in chambers instead of pints of cider-and-black under the pier.
‘So have I got a shirt?’ Martha prompted.
Jacks nodded. ‘In the airing cupboard.’
‘The airing cupboard on the landing I just came from?’ Martha pointed to the ceiling.
‘That’s the one.’ Jacks traced the words of the newspaper article with her finger, ignoring her daughter’s sarcasm.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, what is it you’re reading?’ Martha was chewing gum, which Jacks found inexplicable before breakfast. It must make everything taste of mint and what if she accidentally swallowed it? That didn’t bear thinking about.
‘It’s an article about conservatory windows and how to clean them.’ She looked at her daughter as her tortoiseshell-framed glasses slipped down her nose.
‘But we haven’t even got a conservatory!’ Martha rolled her eyes.
Jacks removed her specs and looked at the back wall of the kitchen that ran the width of their house. ‘Yet. I don’t have a conservatory yet.’
Martha rolled her eyes again. ‘Instead of a conservatory, can’t you just build an extra bedroom in the loft so I don’t have to share with Jonty? I hate sharing with him. It’s not fair!’
‘Really, Martha? Funny how you’ve not mentioned it.’ She gave a wry smile as her daughter thumped back up the stairs. Jacks felt a familiar flicker of guilt. Martha was right; she shouldn’t have to share with her little brother. Jonty had been moved into his big sister’s room with a set of open bookshelves dividing the space when Jacks’ mum had come to live with them. It was Martha’s favourite topic of conversation. Jacks had hoped the complaints about just how hard done by she was might have waned. They hadn’t.
For the first time that day she considered the seven thousand, four hundred and eighty-two pounds that sat in their savings account and had done so for a little over a year. It was the sum that remained from the sale of her parents’ house, a couple of streets away in Addicott Road, once they had paid for the hoist to be installed in the bathroom. A hoist her mum never used because it scared her and anyway, as it turned out, it was so much easier to pop her in the shower, less palaver. The hoist, however, hadn’t cost as much as the stair lift that had been fitted. A stair lift on which Jacks bashed her shins in the dark of night and about which she had to continually reprimand Jonty, who liked using it as a ride and to ferry his Transformers up and down.
‘I’ll be late tonight. City are playing at home, Tuesday-night friendly, so don’t worry about tea, I’ll get a pie at Ashton Gate.’ This her husband Pete yelled excitedly from the landing. She shook her head; no wonder Martha thought shouting was okay.
‘Righto.’ She sighed, reaching for her mug and draining the contents. The best cup of tea in the whole day was undoubtedly this first one.
‘Mu-um?’ Jonty hollered from behind the bedroom door.
‘I give up.’ Jacks closed the paper and placed her empty mug and toast plate in the sink. ‘Yes, love?’
‘I need to take in some things to make a model of a famous building!’
‘What?’ Jacks spun round and marched from the kitchen into their narrow hallway, avoiding the sports bag that blocked her path and the stack of boxes, hoping she had misheard.
‘Mrs Palmer says we need to take in things from our household rubbish and recycling that we can use to build a model of a famous building.’ He was precise, probably reading from whatever scrap of paper he had discovered bearing this information.
‘When do you need it by?’ Not today, please not today…
‘Today!’ he answered.
‘God, Jonty! And you are telling me now?’ Jacks snapped. Placing her hands on her slender hips, she tried to think of a solution: what had they thrown away recently that might resemble a building?
‘Thought we weren’t supposed to shout up the stairs?’ Martha poked her head around the bathroom door, her hand gripping the straightening irons that were plugged in on the landing.
‘Don’t be sarky to your mum,’ Pete interjected as he thundered down the stairs in his baggy sweatpants, thick socks, long-sleeved T-shirt and body warmer, the uniform of a man who worked outside.
‘I would have told you before, but I forgot!’ Jonty explained.
‘We out of milk?’ Pete called.
Jacks turned her head towards the kitchen. ‘No, it’s on the side, near the kettle!’ Then she trod the first stair. ‘Forgetting is no good, Jonty. I’ve told you to let me have any notes or pieces of paper as soon as you bring them out of school. That way we can make sure we have a bit of notice for things like this.’
‘Yeah, we don’t want a repeat of the Harvest Festival embarrassment!’ Martha laughed.
‘Thank you for that, Martha! Just get yourself ready.’ Jacks felt her cheeks flame as she remembered sending him off for the grand Harvest Festival service with an offering of a tin of pinto beans and a Cadbury’s Creme Egg. It was all she could lay her hands on at the last minute as they had walked out of the front door. Apparently Mrs Palmer had sniffed at the items and asked what pinto beans were. To which Jonty had replied, ‘They’re for making pinto.’ Jacks had grabbed them in error from the supermarket shelf and was secretly quite glad not to have them lurking in the cupboard, taunting her with their fancy label, confirming her lack of culinary knowhow.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ Jonty offered.
‘That’s okay.’ She smiled, the sound of his eight-year-old baby voice and his contrition twisting her heart. He was a good boy, her baby. ‘Can you both come down and have yo
ur breakfast as soon as you’re ready, I don’t want to be late today!’
‘I gave you a piece of paper a week ago, about that art trip to Paris and you still haven’t said if I can go or not!’ Martha said.
‘Your dad and I are still discussing it.’ Jacks nodded. She placed her hand on her forehead, simultaneously trying to think about what Jonty could take in and how to explain to Martha that there just weren’t the funds for a trip to Paris. The savings-account money was for a rainy day or any expenses her mum might have. Her own conservatory was a pipe dream and so, sadly, was her daughter’s desire to go to Paris. Paris indeed! It made her chuckle. In her day they’d had a trip to Oldbury Power Station, with a packed lunch thrown in.
‘What are we still discussing?’ Pete asked from the kitchen.
‘Martha’s trip to Paris!’ Jacks replied.
‘So I can go?’ Martha said.
Jacks shook her head. ‘No, we are still discussing it!’
‘I don’t know why anyone would want to go to Paris!’ Pete joined in from the kitchen table. ‘Dirty, ’orrible place where you’ll get mugged and you need a mortgage just to buy a cup of tea!’
‘Dad, you think I’m going to get mugged everywhere! You said I’d get mugged if I went to Worle on my own on the bus, and I didn’t!’
‘You was just lucky, girl. And just cos you survived Worle, doesn’t mean you’ll have the same luck in Paris.’
‘And anyway, how do you know what Paris is like, you’ve never even been!’ Martha pointed out.
‘No interest in it, love, that’s why.’
‘God, Dad, you think going up to Bristol is a big day out!’
‘’Tis when the mighty City are playing.’ Pete clapped his hands together, making a big noise.
‘Can I come with you tonight, Dad, to see the mighty City?’ Jonty asked.
‘No, mate. No midweek games till you can stand a round at The Robins, them’s the rules.’
‘I think you make up the rules as you go along.’ Martha jumped to her little brother’s defence. ‘It’s not up to Dad if I go to France or not, is it, Mum? You know what he’s like!’
‘I can hear you, Miss Martha!’ Pete yelled.
‘What building am I making, Mum?’ Jonty asked.
‘Errmm…’ Jacks was trying to think of something when the bell rang out, loud and clear above the chatter and accusations flying back and forth up and down the stairs.
‘Nan’s ringing!’ Jonty and Martha shouted in unison.
I know. I heard it.
When Jacks’ mum, Ida Morgan, had first come to live with them eighteen months ago, she had seemed disorientated, uncomfortable and confused, so Jacks had given her a small hand bell, to be rung whenever she needed tending to. Turned out she needed tending to quite a lot.
When Ida’s dementia had first become apparent, several years ago now, it was ignored. Jacks’ dad, Don, had trivialised it and they had all just gone along with it, joining in the banter of distraction. What did it matter if Ida forgot where she lived and served frozen oven chips without cooking them first? Called everybody by the wrong name, put eggs in the tumble dryer and the car keys in a jar of coffee? Jacks’ dad had made light of it as he tried to keep things ticking along, not wanting to frighten his wife or distress their only daughter. But after he died, Ida declined rapidly; or maybe it was that Jacks’ dad had shielded her from the extent of her mum’s condition. Either way, it was a shock.
To begin with, Jacks would go round to Addicott Road and sit with her mum during the day and Pete would pop in on her every night, checking up on her and locking the doors and windows for bedtime. One night he found her in the garden, wearing nothing but her nightie as she placed food on the small patch of lawn. He watched as she piled up uncooked potatoes, scattered cereal from boxes and threw down an old chicken carcass and some cheese on to the grass.
‘What are you doing, Ida?’ he had asked gently.
She looked at him without recognition. ‘I’m putting food out for the rabbits,’ she replied. ‘They don’t feed themselves, you know!’
‘You really shouldn’t do that, Ida. It will attract rats,’ he said softly, racking his brain, trying to recall if they had ever had a pet rabbit.
‘Don’t be stupid!’ she snapped. ‘This isn’t food for the rats, it’s for the rabbits!’
He had guided her inside the house, where she made a cup of tea as though nothing had happened.
Not long after that, Jacks and Pete decided she should move in with them, to Sunnyside Road. Eighteen months on and her mum was now frail. She was quiet mostly, with the odd burst of lucidity, preferring to be in bed than on the sofa and favouring things that were familiar and routine. Sometimes she recognised her family and at other times not. For Ida it was a dark, difficult and lonely way to live. And, awful though it was to admit, for Jacks, Pete and the kids it was as if a ghoulish spectre lurked in the rooms Ida occupied, visible and scary; given the choice, they avoided sitting in its shadow. They loved her of course, but the kids could find little to recognise in the old lady who yelled and whistled; she was quite unlike the nan who used to make the best apple pie in the world and who would sneak them sweets before bedtime when their mum wasn’t looking.
Jacks placed her cupped hands at her mouth and hollered, ‘Shan’t be a minute, Mum!’ before dashing into the kitchen. ‘Mum’s ringing, Pete. Do me a favour, try and find Jonty something he can make a building out of. You’ll need to sort through the recycling in the boxes out back.’ She disappeared into the hallway.
Pete stopped shovelling his cornflakes and stared after his wife. ‘What?’ he called, but it was too late, she was already running up the stairs.
Jacks stood on the small square landing and gripped the door handle. She inhaled and painted on a smile.
Holding her breath, as she did every morning, unwilling to breathe in the claustrophobic fug of ammonia, wind and something akin to rotting, she marched over to the curtains and pulled them wide as she opened the window a little, welcoming the cold blast that hit her face. It was a decent-sized bedroom, with built-in wardrobes along one wall and a double bed facing the window. The floral rugs were from her parents’ house, as were the pictures on the walls and the cluster of photographs dotted along the windowsill showing Jacks through the ages.
She turned to the wizened figure in the middle of the bed. Ida was shrinking month on month, slipping further and further down the mattress each night, to the point that Jacks imagined she might one day turn to dust and disappear altogether. At least then Jonty could have his room back. She swallowed the wicked thought. This was her mum after all.
‘Morning, Mum!’ she chirped, not expecting a response. Jacks adopted a note of false joviality for when she addressed her mother. It made it easier somehow to smile and be jolly, just as it did with any boring job or tricky customer. ‘How did you sleep? Good? Come on, let’s get you up.’
She pulled back the pink candlewick bedspread that had graced her parents’ marital bed for as long as she could remember. She had a vivid memory of being scolded by her mum for picking off the pattern, pulling the tiny threads between her fingernails until there was a square inch of missing ripple and a bald spot in its place. This treasured cover was one of the few things that had travelled with her across town.
‘It’s a lovely brand-new day!’ Jacks beamed as she pulled her mum’s pale lilac nightie up above her nappy. She was no longer embarrassed or even noticed the sodden bulk that sat between Ida’s emaciated limbs. Her actions were purposeful, matter of fact, focused. This hadn’t always been the case. The first few months had been a steep learning curve. Jacks had felt very uncomfortable and, shocked by her mother’s body, her hesitancy and reluctance to touch her had served only to heighten the grim reality for them both. They had never been over-demonstrative, not the kind to hug or kiss, and nudity had been a big no-no. Prior to the monumental shift in their relationship, she had seen her mum in a bathing costume maybe once or twi
ce and that was the extent of their intimacy. Yet all of a sudden she was forced to clean under the flat, sagging, triangular-shaped breasts with their long nipples pointing towards the floor; to touch the ancient, leathery skin that was almost translucent, stretched over brittle bones and peppered with protruding, purple veins; and to clothe her private parts, now hairless and defunct. At first this was repellent, shocking, but it soon became just another area that needed soaping and drying before being eased into the demeaning adult nappy that reduced her mother to the status of a helpless baby.
‘Let’s get you comfy.’ Jacks smiled as she turned her mother gently on the mattress until she was lying on her back. The crackle of the plastic undersheet provided the familiar background noise. Jacks pulled a clean nappy from the basket on top of the chest of drawers and grabbed the wet wipes that sat next to them. ‘I’ll get you shipshape, Mum, then I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea, how about that? I’ll drop the kids at school and then I’ll do your breakfast when I get back. I shan’t be too long and Pete will be here for a bit. You’ll only be on your own for a few minutes.’ It was similar to what she repeated every morning, with no idea how much of it went in, offered more to reassure herself than relay information.
‘I… I’m waiting for that letter,’ her mum stated, clearly, eloquently.
‘Oh, right. Well, the postman’s not been yet, but I’ll keep an eye out for him and if he brings you a letter, I’ll pop it straight up to you.’ She kept a singsong note to her words, as though addressing a petulant child. Waiting for letters that never came was one of Ida’s more recent obsessions. It had started one Sunday lunch, when she’d suddenly burst into tears and shouted, ‘I’ve lost them! I’ve lost them all! They were in a bundle, all my letters. I tried to keep them safe, but now they’ve gone!’ No one had any idea what she meant, but they soon found that humouring her was the best response.
Three-And-A-Half Heartbeats Page 23