by Liz Byrski
Zoë knows that she should be feeling sympathy and concern, but what she actually feels is overwhelming resentment and irritation. The situation has but one saving grace; she won’t be required to look after her mother at home. Eileen long ago insisted that she wanted the three-stage care option – indeed, she often mentions that she is looking forward to assisted living, as though it is a level of personal service for which she has been waiting all her life. She even anticipates this assessment, so disturbing to Zoë, as some sort of special honour. They settle down on two hard plastic chairs to wait, and Zoë puts on her glasses in order to fill out the forms the receptionist has given her.
‘So, he’s back then,’ Eileen says. ‘All right, is he?’
‘Apparently so,’ Zoë says, ‘I haven’t seen him yet; he only got back last night.’
‘I hope he’ll be over to see me soon. Today, probably.’
Zoë looks up in surprise. Eileen has never, ever expressed any desire to see Dan or to have him visit her. ‘Why would you think that?’ she asks, knowing she sounds curt, but decades of resentment about Dan’s treatment by Eileen is hard to disguise.
‘Well, I’m his grandmother, after all.’
This is also startlingly new; Zoë can’t remember a time when Eileen ever referred to Dan as anything other than ‘the boy’. She puts down the pen and takes off her glasses; she’s preparing some sharp and accusatory response but Eileen is too quick for her.
‘And I’m very proud of him.’
‘Really?’
Eileen gives her trademark sniff. ‘Of course, out there fighting for his country.’
‘You never seemed proud of him before.’
‘Rubbish,’ Eileen says, shaking her shoulders irritably. ‘He’s a credit to us, to the family. That’s what I’ve always said.’
‘Not to me, you haven’t,’ Zoë says. ‘Nor to Dan, as far as I’m aware.’
‘I don’t believe in too much fancy talk. It can turn a person’s head.’
Zoë feels an overwhelming urge to slap her mother’s face, but knows that this is probably not the place to do it.
‘And the girl,’ Eileen goes on. ‘What about the girl?’
‘What girl?’
‘The black girl, with the baby.’
‘If you mean Justine, she’s not a girl. She’s a woman and she’s Dan’s wife, and she has a name. And the baby is your great-grandson.’
‘Got married, did they?’
Zoë feels a cold chill creep up her spine; something very strange is happening.
‘Almost two years ago, Mum,’ she says a little more gently.
‘Nobody told me that.’
‘You were at the wedding.’
‘Rubbish,’ Eileen says. ‘I’d have remembered.’
Zoë opens her handbag and pulls out the slim plastic wallet in which she keeps a few favourite photographs. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘here, a photograph of the wedding with all the family. Dan and Justine in the middle, and there’s Archie and me and the girls, and there you are, between Gaby and Jane.’
Eileen peers intently at the photograph. ‘That’s nice. Why haven’t you shown me this before?’
Zoë, recalling the enlargement that stands in a silver frame alongside others on the sideboard in Eileen’s room, observes her mother more closely. It is a long time since she has looked attentively into her face; a long time since she had any face-to-face, one-on-one conversation with her. Their relationship, always strained and distant, is increasingly filtered through Archie and the girls. When they are together, they avoid anything except for minimal eye contact, their brief interactions conducted side-on or facing away from each other.
Archie had suggested some time ago that if Zoë could adopt a different attitude towards her mother, then Eileen herself might be moved to change. It’s something that Zoë has tried on more than one occasion, the most recent having been soon after her return from England.
‘You complain that she lacks generosity, that she never has a good word to say to you or about you, but you know, you’re the same when it comes to her,’ Archie had said.
He hadn’t put it so bluntly before and Zoë knew he was right. After that she had tried to be more open with Eileen, to let her mother see more of the person her daughter had become. But Eileen, it seemed, was locked into her way of being and probably saw no reason to change.
Now, here in the waiting room, facing Eileen is like facing a stranger. This isn’t simply because they know so little of each other but because Eileen’s face has actually changed. It seems to be drooping, as though the facial muscles have slackened. The familiar beady-eyed disapproval has disappeared, and her eyes now look dull and a little vacant. The tight mouth is loose and a trail of saliva has leaked out into a trickle down to her jaw line.
‘Are you . . . um . . . are you feeling okay, Mum?’ Zoë asks, putting a hand on her mother’s arm. ‘You don’t look too good.’
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ Eileen says. ‘These seats aren’t very comfortable, are they? I wouldn’t mind an ice cream; what time does the film start?’
‘They think she must have had a slight stroke during the night,’ Zoë tells Archie when he gets home. ‘I suppose it was a good thing we were there. I feel terrible that I didn’t even notice when I picked her up.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s easily done, I suppose,’ Archie says.
But Zoë knows he’s just being kind. He, of all people, knows the depth of antagonism between her and Eileen, and the extent of her daughterly neglect. ‘You would have noticed,’ she says.
He shrugs. ‘Not necessarily. Anyway, what’s happening now?’
‘They’ve admitted her, and they’re going to do a whole lot of tests, and do the geriatric assessment as well while she’s there. She’ll be there for a couple of days, apparently. And she wants to see Dan.’
‘Dan? Why? Since when?’
‘Since today, because she’s very proud of him, always has been, it seems, and when a grandson gets back home from the field of battle, one of the first things he should do is visit his grandmother.’
‘Never!’
‘I kid you not. It started just after we arrived, and then she kept telling the consultant about it. Then she went on and on about it again while we were waiting for them to find her a bed on the ward.’
Archie shakes his head in disbelief. ‘Extraordinary. Have you told Dan?’
‘Yes, I rang him when I got back from the hospital. He says he’ll go up there this evening, about seven, and he’ll come in here on the way back. I said you’d call and that maybe you’d go with him. He might need moral support.’
Archie nods. ‘He might, indeed. And, anyway, this is something I absolutely have to see for myself.’
‘Arch,’ Zoë says, hesitating. ‘Speaking of moral support . . . you are okay now, aren’t you? For a while there, you seemed to be, well, upset, not like yourself at all. When I got back from England I mean.’
Archie, whose fears had largely been laid to rest after his conversation with Justine, feels now as though he has been ambushed. His skin prickles with sudden heat and all the old anxiety is revived. He is a child again, desperately needing reassurance and that, in turn, makes him feel awkward and pathetic. He clears his throat and looks briefly away, hoping to hide the flush that is creeping up his neck and burning his face.
‘Well,’ he begins, ‘since you mention it, I . . . I was afraid that something might have happened with you and Richard.’
Zoë stares at him, her puzzlement changing slowly to comprehension. ‘You mean, you thought I might have slept with Richard?’
Archie, fixing his gaze on his work boots, nods without looking up. ‘I thought it was a possibility.’
‘Oh, Arch,’ Zoë says, crossing the kitchen towards him. She slips her arms around him and looks up into his face. ‘I’m so sorry, and there I was joking that you were having a mid-life crisis.’
‘I was,’ he says, ‘a crisis about you and him.
’
‘You could have asked me.’
‘I’m asking you now,’ Archie says.
‘Well, the answer is no,’ Zoë says, stretching up to kiss him. ‘No, of course not. It was odd meeting Richard again, and finding I didn’t hate him. And to be honest I did wonder what it might be like, but I never once had the desire to find out. Besides,’ she hesitates, ‘I wouldn’t do that to you. I love you, Arch, you know that, don’t you? I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you or to risk what we’ve got.’
And now Archie sees that he has always known this; the anxiety about unanswered phone calls had unleashed a primal fear that bore little or no relation to the woman he knows Zoë to be.
Dan wonders if he should be feeling more generous about his elevation from family pariah to favourite, and heroic, grandchild, but decides that being found acceptable only when Eileen is losing her marbles is probably meaningless. When he was in his teens he had abandoned any interest in what she thought of him, so it would be pathetic to take this seriously now.
‘Weird,’ he says to Archie, as they leave the ward and head out to the car park. ‘That was like an LSD trip.’
‘Sadly, I wouldn’t know,’ Archie says, ‘but it was certainly very strange. Makes you wonder if she’s always felt like that but never found a way to say it before.’
‘I doubt it,’ says Dan. ‘Don’t they say that when people get dementia they start doing things that are totally out of character?’
‘I think that’s just Alzheimer’s, and we don’t know yet if she’s got that. Maybe it’s only what a slight stroke can do to addle the brain.’ He presses a hand onto Dan’s shoulder. ‘Well, whatever, the good thing is that you’re home.’
‘And may not have to go back, if I can sort out the discharge,’ Dan says.
‘So, have you actually started the process?’
‘Yep. But please don’t tell Mum, because I don’t know how long it’s going to take and if she knows, she’ll be asking for updates every day. I’ll tell her when I know what’s happening.’
‘And Justine?’
‘Oh yes, Jus knows; happy as Larry, she is.’
‘And you?’
‘You know how it is; you set something in motion, you know it’s the right thing and it’s what you want, but you have to think about the implications. Yeah, I want to get out, but, at the same time, it’s been my whole adult life so far. Up until a year ago, I thought I’d be there forever. It’s like rethinking not just what I’m going to do, but who I am.’
Archie nods. ‘That’s not a bad thing to do in your mid-thirties; work out what you want and where you’re heading.’
They get into the car and Archie switches on the engine.
‘How about you, Arch?’ Dan asks. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Yes,’ Archie says. ‘Pretty good. Very good, really. Zo finally forced me into booking a holiday – three weeks in Vanuatu at the end of November. I resisted, of course, but now that it’s booked, I’m hanging out for it.’
Dan leans back in his seat, well aware that Archie knows what he was asking, and confident that the bland response is a good sign. So that’s sorted, he thinks, and feels the same relief that he’d felt as a small boy on the very few occasions that his parents had one of their fairly polite arguments. The disagreements had never lasted long but the residual tension used to scramble Dan’s head until he saw that things were back to normal again. It stems, he thinks, from an anxiety from his early years with Zoë; a sense that disaster was always just around the corner. He’d been eight when Archie turned up on the jetty and baited his line, and there had not been a day since then that he had wanted to contemplate being without him.
‘Zoë’s got something to show you,’ Archie says eventually, turning the car into the drive. ‘A surprise.’
‘Yeah, Jus told me but she won’t say what it is.’
There are, as always, tears when he arrives home. Last night, his own and Justine’s, and even tears from Harry, who looked terrified at the sight of him and had buried his face in Justine’s shoulder, and then her lap, each time Dan had tried to talk to him. Now, tonight, there are Rosie’s, which are joyful but brief. And then Zoë’s; surprisingly, more controlled this time, but still an outpouring of love and pride. She looks different again, he thinks, lighter within herself. The biggest difference, though, is what is happening between her and Justine. As always, when on active service he was sustained by his belief in the job and thoughts of his family. If there was one thing he wished for during this latest tour of duty, it was that Justine would be able to cast off the mistrust created by Zoë’s early hostility and take a step in her direction. Now, clearly, this has happened.
‘I’ve got something to show you, Dan,’ Zoë says. And Justine, Archie and Rosie suddenly find things that they have to do in other rooms, and he is left alone with his mother. ‘It’s a surprise and I hope you’ll think it’s a good one.’
‘You’ve won Lotto?’ he jokes, unnerved.
‘Better, possibly.’ She walks over to sit beside him on the sofa, and hands him a small envelope.
‘What’s this?’
‘Take a look.’
There are two old photographs: battered colour prints of a group of strangers standing on some steps.
‘What is it?’
‘Look closer.’
He looks again and sees that the picture is of a wedding; a rather dreary-looking one with the bride and groom standing stiff and awkward at the centre. And then he realises that the bride looks exactly like Gaby, only shorter. ‘It’s you? You and Richard?’
She nods. ‘But look again.’
And when he does, he catches his breath because he is looking at himself. Standing just behind his mother is a tall black man who looks out to the camera smiling. And it is not a smile produced for a photograph, but one that is clearly a part of who he is, of how he moves through the world. Dan swallows hard and looks up.
‘My father . . .’ he says. ‘It’s my father?’
Zoë nods. ‘Yes, Dan, it’s Harry.’
It is almost unbearable for him to take his gaze from the picture but slowly he slides it sideways to reveal the second photograph. Zoë and Richard are cutting awkwardly into a cake, and there’s his father again, and this time Dan can see his eyes more clearly. They are full of hope and confidence; he looks like a man at peace with himself, a man you’d be glad to have on your side, a man who knows how to love. Dan drops his head and puts his hand over his eyes. He can’t speak and even wonders if he might be going to pass out, and, as he struggles to draw on his training to gain control of his emotions, he realises that nothing trains you for something like this. All you can do is surrender, accept the gift and be thankful.
FORTY-SIX
Sintra, Portugal – October 2002
‘High on a hilltop above Sintra, the pseudo medieval Pena Palace stands like a fairytale castle overlooking the glorious wooded landscape beneath,’ Tom reads aloud from the guidebook.
‘It’s amazing,’ Julia says, catching her breath, which is still in short supply after the steep climb through woodland up a winding path.
‘It was built in the eighteen forties by Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, husband of Maria, Queen of Portugal. Apparently, the drawbridge doesn’t draw.’
‘Well, that’s not surprising.’
‘And that bloke – the statue on the top of that crag over there is . . . er . . . Baron Eschwege, dressed as a warrior knight. He organised the statue himself, for purposes of immortality. Very German.’
‘He looks rather noble,’ Julia says. ‘But you would, wouldn’t you, dressed as a warrior knight on a hilltop, hazy in the sunlight.’
‘It is a stunning fantasy of ramparts, domes and towers in shades of mustard yellow and deep rose with one section faced with azure toned ceramic tiles . . .’
‘For heaven’s sake, Tom. Stop reading the book and just look at it, will you?’
Tom closes the book and looks. ‘Magic,�
� he breathes. ‘You could come up here, to your own little world, and never want to leave.’
‘Just nip out each morning for The Guardian, I suppose.’
He shakes his head. ‘No need, read it online. It’s been described as a compelling riot of kitsch.’
‘The Guardian online?’
He rolls his eyes. ‘The palace.’
‘Well, it’s that all right! I’m dying to see inside.’
‘Let’s sit down for a minute,’ Tom says, perching on the low wall, and Julia joins him. ‘You know, Jules, I really prefer this part of Portugal to the Algarve.’
‘Me too.’
‘So, that flat we saw in Estoril felt . . .’
‘Just right. Home from home.’
‘And a flat makes sense for us; easy to manage from a distance, easy to lend to friends. Shall we do it?’
Julia smiles. ‘I can see us enjoying it together, even if we only have a short time left.’
‘I wish you’d stop talking as though the grim reaper is lurking just around the corner,’ Tom says, standing up again, and pacing irritably back and forth. ‘A couple of years ago, you were going on about me wanting to drag you into stultifying retirement, which, of course, I wasn’t. Now you’re planning our deaths. We could have another thirty years. I am not planning to turn my toes up yet, thank you very much.’
‘Well, me neither . . .’
‘Then shut up about it, and stop tagging it on to every conversation we have about the future.’
It is so unusual for him to snap at her that Julia is shaken. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’
‘Yes . . . good. I know what’s behind it. You think because I’m older and I’ve been sick a couple of times, I’m going to die first and leave you behind.’
Julia is silent, gazing up at the tall mustard yellow tower with its black dome, vivid against the unbroken blue of the sky. ‘Yes,’ she says eventually. ‘I suppose that’s it, really.’