‘Here we are,’ Alex said as they approached a cluster of tents and caravans. The door to an orange-and-cream camper van slid open and out stepped a tall, smiling woman with her hair in a plait that reached down to her waist. She enfolded Alex in her arms and closed her eyes as she hugged him. ‘I’m so glad you’re back, sweetie,’ she said. ‘How did it go with your dad?’
Alex’s cheeks pinked as he glanced at Eleanor while extricating himself from his mother’s embrace. ‘Yeah. It wasn’t great. I’ll tell you later. Anyway, this is Eleanor. She got on the wrong train and she doesn’t want to go home, so she might stay for a bit.’ He took her arm and pulled her forward. ‘El, this is Jill, my mad mother.’
Jill’s smile broadened even further and she cuffed Alex playfully on the shoulder. ‘Eleanor,’ Jill put her arms out and pulled her into them as though she was a long-lost friend. She smelt of bonfires and slightly of motor oil and that green gunge Ray used to clean his hands with after he’d been tinkering with his car – Swarfega, that was it. ‘Eleanor, welcome, welcome. The more the merrier. Excuse the state of me.’ She released her and held up her hands, which were smeared with black oil. ‘I’ve been trying to sort out this fucking camper. I swear to God, she’s for the scrapyard if she keeps this up.’
Eleanor had no idea what to say, and looked helplessly at Alex.
‘Forgive my foul-mouthed mother,’ he said, half smiling. ‘She’s just showing off.’
‘No, it’s fine.’ She smiled. ‘I mean, I’m not . . . I don’t . . .’ In truth, she was mildly shocked that someone’s mother should swear so freely in front of her. But on the other hand, she liked it, because it made her feel instantly accepted and welcomed. She laughed. ‘Sorry, I’m trying to say I really don’t mind. I swear all the time.’
‘Yeah, but probably not within two seconds of meeting someone.’ Alex grinned.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jill said. ‘I do try, but when something vexes me . . .’ She turned towards the camper. ‘Like Doris here.’ She aimed a small kick at the wheel arch. ‘Who keeps refusing to start, no matter how nicely I speak to her . . . then I just can’t help myself.’
‘I told you, El.’ Alex rolled his eyes. ‘She’s a nutter.’
*
If anyone had told Eleanor she would end up sleeping in a tent in the middle of winter and living on eggs, beans and soup, she would have found it hard to believe. But it was amazing how quickly you could get used to something when everybody else was doing the same thing without complaining.
There was a Quaker meeting house not far from the camp where the women could use the telephone, so she’d phoned her mum to let her know where she was and that she wasn’t coming home for Christmas. Her mum was upset, of course, but probably secretly relieved. And when they spoke again two weeks later, she wasn’t at all happy at Eleanor’s news that she definitely wasn’t going back to Reading. She didn’t like upsetting her mum, but she was an adult now; this was her life.
She didn’t see much of Alex on the weekends – he was here because he was always in demand as a babysitter, and was often around the camp somewhere, entertaining groups of kids while their mums were busy organising things or having run-ins with the police. His little sister – everyone called her Dawn but Eleanor thought ‘Misty’ was much prettier – adored him and could usually be found clinging to his legs or sitting on his shoulders. No trace of sibling rivalry there. Some of the children were here all the time, and some came for visits, dropped off by their dads after breakfast and collected again later. A couple of times, Alex asked Eleanor if she fancied babysitting with him. She might have been okay with the older children; she could see herself turning a skipping rope or kicking a ball around. But when it came to the babies and toddlers, she couldn’t imagine trusting herself enough. Would she ever be able to hold a baby in her arms? ‘I’m not very good with little kids,’ she told him. ‘Never have been.’
*
The first time she saw Alex driving the camper, her mouth dropped open. He’d been up to the main gate to pick up some firewood. ‘You can drive!’ she said like an idiot when he slid the door back and jumped down onto the grass. ‘How come you can drive?’
‘Jill taught me.’
‘But . . . I didn’t think you were old enough.’
‘Well, I’m not old enough to take my test yet, so I can’t actually drive it off the site, but I passed my moped test before Christmas, so I know a bit about the road already.’ He lifted a sack of firewood down onto the grass. ‘And Jill’s taken me out in Doris loads of times – only round car parks and wasteland and that, but enough for me to get the hang of the gears. Obviously, I’ll need a few proper lessons as well, but Jill’s paying for those for my birthday. She was going to give me Doris when she gets a new camper, but I want to save up for my own car.’
‘That’ll take a while, won’t it?’ She helped him haul down the other sack of wood.
‘Probably. But when we go back to the house, I’ll be able to get a weekend job, and it won’t be that long before I leave school anyway. I’m going to get a second-hand Ford Escort.’
‘I wish I could drive. I was having lessons before I started at Reading, but I’d only had four and then . . . then my hair fell out and, I don’t know, I chickened out, I suppose. My instructor was lovely, but he’d have noticed and I didn’t want to have to explain.’
‘Get Jill to teach you. You can drive Doris round here, easy. You still got your provisional licence?’
‘Yes, it’s in my bag.’ She’d planned to take lessons again at some point, and she didn’t want to be like her mum and leave it until she was over thirty before she passed her test, and only then after Peggy had nagged her into it. Peggy said all women should learn to drive as soon as possible, because then you didn’t have to rely on men to give you lifts. ‘Do you think your mum would mind?’
‘Course she wouldn’t. Jill’s always teaching people to do stuff.’
Eleanor, the present
Exhausted, Eleanor climbs into bed at half past nine, thinking about Scalby and wondering what they’re doing on the farm right at this moment. It’s Friday night, so probably some wine, maybe a bit of a sing-song in the main house. She thinks about Dylan, about the feel of his bed-warmed skin against hers, and to her astonishment she finds a tear on her cheek. She flicks it away immediately. For God’s sake! What is the matter with her? When has she ever even thought about Dylan when they weren’t together? A handful of times over the whole year, maybe, and usually only when it’s nearing the time when he’s likely to show up. He’ll only be in the country another few weeks anyway, so there’s no point thinking about him. But then her thoughts stray to the picture he did of her head. She’ll get it framed eventually, but for the moment, she’s keeping it in the wardrobe so it doesn’t get damp. She still can’t quite get over the amount of thought he put into it, not to mention the work. All for her; all because he is interested in her and what goes on in her head. She’d like to look at it again, but she doesn’t want to damage it by pulling it in and out of its cardboard tube. She sighs. She can’t get comfortable. The pillow is hard and lumpy. She sits up and punches it a few times but it doesn’t make much difference. She lies down again, but it makes her ear hurt. This bloody mattress is so ancient she can feel the springs. She turns onto her back and makes a conscious effort to try to relax.
Her mother has been fine over the last week or so. Well, fine-ish. She accused Eleanor of stealing her handbag when she’d actually left it upstairs in Peggy’s kitchen, and she’s started emptying cupboards again, but apart from that, it hasn’t been too bad until today. Today, her mother has driven her nuts; following her around, asking the same irrelevant questions over and over again. Jenny is much better at handling this sort of thing; she seems to have endless patience with Marjorie, no matter how annoying she’s being. ‘Believe me,’ Jenny told her, ‘I’ve come across a lot worse.’ Then she’d put an arm around her waist and given her a squeeze. ‘You’re doing all
right, you know. And don’t get me wrong, it’s only because I’m trained to do this and I’ve got no personal connection. If it was my flipping mother . . .’ and they’d both laughed.
She tries to focus on that now. It’s to be expected, and it will get worse. Tears prick her eyes again, but this time she realises that they aren’t because she is missing Dylan or the farm – well, not entirely, anyway. They’re because she feels so bloody frustrated. Her body is awash with it all, full up with it. She nearly shouted at her mum this afternoon but stopped herself, thank God. It wasn’t her mother’s fault. She is beginning to see Alzheimer’s as a living creature, an entity who has taken possession of her mother’s mind and body and is moving around the house taunting them with its conquest. It flashes through her mind that she doesn’t have to do this; no one is making her stay here. Then she shakes that thought out of her head. She finds herself thinking about that couple of years when she lived in the camper. It was so soothing to be certain that no one knew where she was unless she chose to tell them, that she wasn’t responsible for anyone but herself. Apart from that, though, she remembers very little about that dark time.
Eventually her body stills, her breathing slows and she starts to sink down into a deep pool of sleep. Then she is upstairs standing by an open window; the night darkness has quite suddenly adjusted itself so that she knows it is early morning, a heartbeat or two before the dawn. In that enticing almost-light, she sees that Doris is parked right outside the house, looking like she had thirty years ago, only cleaner, shinier; she is fully operational and raring to go. In fact, her engine is running and her headlight seems to be winking at Eleanor as if to say, Come on, hurry up. So Eleanor climbs in and drives off, still in her pyjamas, running away again, escaping. Guilt starts to gnaw at her, as though acid is burning her stomach. And then she sees her mother, walking by the side of the road in her nightie, but she drives past. She keeps thinking she should turn around and go back, but she cannot move her foot from the accelerator, so she drives and drives and drives, and she knows she has done a terrible thing. She starts to cry and soon she forgets what the terrible thing is, but that makes it worse. If only she could turn around and go back . . .
She wakes with actual tears on her face. The image of her mother walking along the side of the road was so vivid it takes her a moment to accept that she’s been dreaming. So far, her mother hasn’t started wandering, but it’s quite common in people with dementia, and there’s always a first time. Maybe she heard something while she was asleep, and this is her brain’s way of alerting her. She gets out of bed and moves quietly along the hallway to her mother’s room. Heart thumping, she slowly turns the handle and pushes the door open. Thank God; her mum is there, snoring softly.
She creeps back to her room and climbs into bed, falling asleep quickly this time and sleeping soundly until her eyes spring open a few hours later. A soft bluish light seeps through the curtains, which means it must be around five. But it isn’t the light that woke her, she’s sure. She can feel her heart beating, and all her senses are on high alert. She throws the covers back and is out of bed and at the door in seconds. She smells it before she gets even halfway to her mother’s room – gas. She spins round and hurries back along the hall, up the stairs and into the kitchen. Marjorie is sitting at the table with two trays of jam tarts ready for the oven in front of her. ‘Something’s wrong with that blasted cooker,’ she says as Eleanor leaps across the kitchen to turn the gas off. ‘It’s not getting anywhere near hot enough. Oh, don’t open those doors, darling, it’s far too chilly.’
When Eleanor explains, Marjorie is horrified. ‘Oh my goodness, I could have killed us,’ she says. ‘I’m not to be trusted, am I? I could have killed us all.’
*
It’s a beautiful day. Peggy has taken Marjorie to Bromley to look for some summer clothes because even the things she bought recently are hanging off her now. They’ll be back any moment, so Eleanor is preparing lunch for the three of them to eat in the garden. She wanted to try out the new cooker – electric this time – without her mother leaning over her shoulder. Marjorie didn’t want an electric cooker, and when Eleanor explained why they needed one, Marjorie said she’d made the whole thing up.
She is pleased with her morning’s work. She’s made a quiche, a few fairy cakes and her famous – famous on the farm, anyway – Guinness and chocolate cake. She is just spreading the buttercream on top when she hears voices as her mum and Peggy walk along the side alleyway into the garden. They’re both carrying bags and smiling as they come into view and make their way up the veranda steps.
‘Successful trip?’ she asks.
‘Very,’ Peggy says. ‘I bought a red dress and a top, and your mum’s had a real old spend-up. Show her, Marje.’
Her mum looks happy. ‘Yes, Debenhams had some tops on special offer, two for fifteen pounds. Only cheap little t-shirts, but ever so useful, so I bought four.’ She starts to look in her bags. ‘I bought two nice cotton dresses as well, only simple, but fine for around the house. And a skirt, I think, and . . .’ She looks at Peggy. ‘What else, Peg?’
‘That yellow blouse from M and S.’
Her mum seems about to say something, then doesn’t. She looks distracted all of a sudden, as though she is no longer quite following the conversation.
‘You look tired, Mum. Do you want lunch now, or would you like some tea first?’
‘Yes, tea. Please.’ She nods towards the bags she’s holding. ‘I’d better take these downstairs before they get wet.’
Eleanor and Peggy exchange looks. Sometimes it’s best to ignore things like this. Eleanor switches the kettle on. ‘You go and sit in the garden, Mum. I’ll bring your tea out, then I’ll pop down and put these in your room.’
When she opens the bedroom door, her heart sinks. The contents of the wardrobes and cupboards are once again strewn all over the floor as though they’ve been thrown. Marjorie still insists she’s ‘looking for something’, but although Eleanor has helped her go through most of the cupboards now, she still can’t find what she’s looking for or remember what it is. Eleanor dumps the carrier bags on the bed and kneels down to start tidying the mess of papers, boxes, towels and bed linen that are all jumbled together along with the odd shoe or bottle of body lotion. After a moment, she sits back on her heels and wonders why she’s bothering. It’ll only end up on the floor again in a few days’ time. She bundles up the sheets and towels and shoves them back in the cupboard, then heaps the papers into empty shoeboxes. Even though she’s been through everything with Marjorie more than once, she always seems to find one or two photos that she hasn’t seen before, which is why she still hopes she’ll stumble across that photo of Peter she found when she was a teenager. She leafs through a handful of pictures and pauses over an old shot of her mother aged about ten, sitting on a blanket on the grass with her parents. She vaguely remembers her maternal grandfather. In this photo he was probably only in his mid-forties, tall and elegant with slicked-back hair and a full moustache. Her grandmother, who died when Eleanor was tiny, looks tired here, and old. This was taken in Mountsfield Park; there’s the old bandstand in the background. If you stood right in the middle and shouted or stamped your feet, you were rewarded with a fabulous echo. Had her mum done the same thing as a child, she wonders? Maybe she’ll ask her. She puts the photo to one side and looks again through the others. The last time she went with Marjorie to the dementia café, a fortnightly drop-in session run by the church, the woman from the Alzheimer’s organisation talked about using photographs or other prompts – objects, perhaps, or music – to stimulate memories. Eleanor immediately downloaded loads of music onto her laptop and it worked brilliantly – her mum hummed along and tapped her foot and told detailed and entertaining stories of the days when she and Ted had won prizes for their dancing.
But she had to be careful with photographs; photographs had caused trouble in the past. Somewhere in this house there is a little black-and-white snap of
Peter, maybe even more than one. She can’t remember whether she’d asked her mum back then if there were more hidden away somewhere, but she was convinced they’d have taken more than one picture of him. And it was hard to believe they’d have thrown photos away. She wonders what would happen if she were to find that snap and show it to her mother. Not that she has the time to look for it properly these days.
She glances at her watch and sighs, then selects a few pictures from the pile, including one of her mum and Peggy as teenagers in their very new, very stiff-looking nurses’ uniforms. There are a couple of herself here, too – a school portrait taken when she was perhaps nine or ten. She has thick, wavy hair here, held off her face with an Alice band, and she’s wearing her favourite navy polka-dot dress. There aren’t many of her taken after Peter died. True, her parents didn’t actually take this one, but at least they kept it. In the other, she is little more than a toddler. It’s taken at Christmas, in the living room upstairs. A tall, tinsel-draped tree stands to one side of the fireplace, every branch bearing a bauble. She is tearing open a present amid a sea of discarded wrapping paper while her mum kneels just behind her on the rug in front of the fireplace, smiling fondly. Eleanor swallows, gathers up the photos and heads back upstairs.
*
The gentle breeze that kept them comfortable while they ate lunch has disappeared, and the sun is so fierce that even though they’re shaded by the big parasol it’s far too hot to sit outside any longer. The Guinness and chocolate cake is melting after only ten minutes out on the table, so between them they gather up what’s left and make their way inside.
‘So,’ Peggy places the cake carefully on the worktop. ‘What are you two up to this afternoon?’
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