Anne folded the piece of paper and placed it under her saucer.
‘He was some man,’ Jack said.
‘He was certainly that,’ Anne said. She looked over at Maureen as if daring her to say otherwise. ‘That’s what you call loyalty. Sticking with people. And loyalty’s just the same as courage.’
‘Well,’ Jack said. ‘You have plenty of words. I’ll say that for you, Anne. You have more words in you this morning than Heather’s had in sixty-odd years of marriage.’
Maureen frowned. ‘Now, Jack. What was that Anne was saying about loyalty? Don’t speak ill of Heather. You’ve got to stick by your family, haven’t you?’ Anne was staring into the plants. And after a few moments Maureen was off on one, rattling away before crashing her cup down on her saucer. ‘Stick by them? Hell as like. You stick by them for years and what thanks do you get? Wouldn’t give you daylight in a dark corner. Talk about selfish: you could be lying dead.’
Maureen was upset because one of her kids hadn’t sent her a birthday card. Esther was always busy and it was good to be busy but it hurt Maureen to think that her own daughter couldn’t stop and buy a card. Maureen was a slave to Hallmark and she’d never met a flowery card she didn’t like. It was the way her family expressed emotion, sending cards with nice words printed inside, and Esther had no right just ignoring it. No right at all. After all the things Maureen had done for her and all the sacrifices.
Anne’s mind was somewhere else, dreaming about The Beatles. They walked down the promenade in their silver suits and the girls came after them and the light was perfect that day. Jack turned over his newspaper and gave a low whistle. ‘That Abramovich thinks he can buy up the world,’ he said. ‘And it’s always the Russians that cause the trouble. Look at Afghanistan. It was the Russians that started all that. Brezhnev. Remember him? Brezhnev and his tanks upsetting all those people and now we’ve got to go in there and sort it all out. It’s a scandal.’
‘They would send word, wouldn’t they?’ Anne said. ‘If anything had happened to my Luke?’
‘Of course they would,’ Jack said. He folded the newspaper while staring into space and then turned to Anne. ‘It’s amazing to think about your husband and your grandson both being war heroes. They say talent often skips a generation.’
‘Not in this case,’ Maureen said. She was finally glad to have a new subject and felt wise about family. ‘To be fair. Luke’s father was a soldier in Northern Ireland and he died.’
‘Is that right?’ Jack said, turning to Anne. ‘You never mention him.’
‘It’s my family she’s talking about,’ Anne said. She was obviously put out by Maureen taking over and parcelling out facts. ‘Our Luke’s a soldier,’ she said, ‘but really he’s a bit of a thinker, more like my Harry than like his father, who was a nice fellow but had none of that.’
‘Your grandson’s a clever one?’
‘That’s right. He could always give tongue to an idea.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes. He can see what happens behind a photograph.’
‘That’s nice,’ Jack said.
‘Oh, it’s everything,’ Anne said.
JUNGLE
Anne liked to use the laundry room because it was spacious and it had a big drier and she felt she was going on an outing when she went along the corridor with her washing basket and her powder. It was important, Anne used to say, to feel that you had your independence. You could close your back door or you could join the others, it was up to you. Nobody forced you to spend time in the common area if you were having a bad day or couldn’t remember the names. Some days are like that. Some days you are just muddled and every day is different.
It was a long walk down the corridor and the lights would come on at night because of the sensor. She sat in the reception area. She placed her things on the ground and just looked at the plants. The gardener from the council had made a sunken forest with a border of breeze blocks. A forest of yucca, jades, banyan and palm grew all the way to a glass ceiling and you could see stars up there, as if they, too, belonged to Scotland. Anne loved looking into the tangle of plants at Lochranza Court. She felt it was alive with shadows and stories that couldn’t be captured in words.
Someone to love, someone like you.
The corridor was quiet at night, but even if someone passed Anne wouldn’t notice because she was so absorbed in the plants. It was silent but she could almost hear the busy life of the undergrowth. She forgot why she was out. Her basket of washing would often be sitting there in the morning and the warden would find it and know it was Anne’s.
HER OLD SELF
She left her washing the day she read out Harry’s biography and her mind was a bit unsettled. Harry didn’t come often enough. It was only a car journey and she’d promised an editor some prints. She’d been back in her flat for a while and the rabbit was looking at the microwave. She was going to use the speakerphone to tell the night warden there was a noise at her front door but then she realised she could answer the door herself, so she got up and took off the chain. ‘Mrs Quirk,’ the voice said when she opened the door. ‘It’s me, Russell. I was round today to test the smoke alarms. Can I come in and talk to you for a minute?’
Maureen heard them speaking through the wall. It didn’t happen often because Anne didn’t have many visitors, since her grandson was away on service and her daughter wasn’t that welcome. It was nice to hear because Anne used to have such a lot to say, and now she went up and down because of her health and she could be silent for days. Maureen turned down her television and guessed it was a man’s voice; maybe one of the neighbours had taken her in a cup of tea. That’s nice. Maureen continued to watch television in silence. Nothing in the room was old, no pictures, no wood and no books, nothing with a memory. Esther had once asked her why she had no photographs of her grandchildren. And nothing of her own mum and dad, especially her dad. ‘They just gather dust,’ Maureen said, ‘and the shops want a fortune for frames nowadays.’
She had gone that morning to see the warden in her office. She kept her own cup and saucer there, but, for some reason, that day, Maureen didn’t bother with tea. ‘We should have a drink,’ Jackie said. ‘It’s your birthday. It’s a nice glass of fizz we should be having.’
‘Birthdays. I’m past caring about them.’
Jackie closed the door and they spoke about Anne.
‘How long?’ Maureen asked.
‘I don’t know, darling. Maybe a few months. It’s a shame because we’ve tried to keep her here. Her mind’s so alive. We’ve really tried. But it’s getting to the stage where she can’t cope in the flat. Even with you and me covering for her.’
‘She can’t do the cooker.’
‘The kettle. She can’t work the kettle.’
‘And then there’s the rabbit.’ Maureen kept biting her bottom lip in an unconscious display of pity. ‘She’s not quite as bad with the rabbit,’ she said. ‘She still likes to know where he is, but she’s not trying to feed him the way she was before the summer.’
‘You always say “him”,’ Jackie said.
‘Well, that’s what Anne does.’
‘The whole thing’s horrendous, Maureen.’
‘I know.’
‘To see it happen to such an intelligent woman.’
‘I know. Feeding the rabbit. It was me opening the tins. But she seems to have moved beyond that now. I don’t understand it. Every day she’s different and some days she’s like her old self.’
‘She can still talk. And she has a strong imagination. That’s probably what keeps her going.’
‘But it probably makes her seem better than she is.’
‘Exactly,’ Jackie said. ‘It’s mild dementia, but it’s progressive. That’s what the health workers are saying. The people at the Memory Club are monitoring the whole thing, to see how bad she is. We’ve been hiding it …’
‘The whole community’s been hiding it. We don’t want them to take Anne into a home.’
&n
bsp; ‘It’s always the end,’ Jackie said. ‘But then, you can only cover up for so long. Then you’re not doing the person any favours at all, really. You have to let them go.’
‘Oh, don’t say that,’ Maureen said. ‘Not yet, Jackie. She’s still all right and we can —’
‘I’m just saying,’ said Jackie. ‘It can’t go on for ever, and these health workers, they know what they’re doing.’
‘Yes.’
‘We can’t have residents setting fire to things.’
‘No.’ They sat in silence for a moment. ‘Maybe my Esther would have an idea of how to make it easier,’ said Maureen. ‘She’s very well qualified and she has a secretary.’
‘Aye, well,’ Jackie said. ‘It’s worth a try. But Anne will be moving out at some point, Maureen. That’s just a fact, hen, and you need to start preparing for it.’
Maureen was staring at the desk. ‘I saw some of the pictures she took when she was a young lassie,’ she said. ‘Unbelievable, Jackie. You really wouldn’t believe them if you saw them. Just taking an ordinary thing like an old sink full of dishes and making it, well, you know, I don’t know anything about these things.’
‘Beautiful,’ Jackie said.
‘That’s the right word: beautiful. As if life was just pictures. Like things you would see in an old magazine, you know? And when I asked her about her photography she said it was one of the things her late husband Harry did for her when they were young. He was a teacher and he taught her the new methods. She said it was Harry’s technique that made the photographs special.’
‘Is that right?’
‘That’s what she said. He knew about chemicals.’
‘Oh, my,’ Jackie said, ‘it’s great to have a man who knows things.’
Maureen replayed the conversation in her mind with the sound down and the mumbles coming through the wall. She didn’t know what she’d do if Anne ever left Lochranza Court. Maureen recalled when she saw her with a whisky in a crystal tumbler and thought, Good God, here’s Anne. A wee lady she is and she knows her own mind.
BEFORE THE WAR
The young man was nice and he made his own tea by pulling back the tape from the cooker and boiling a pan of water and finding a tea bag. Anne noticed his face was red but it calmed down. He looked like all the boys look nowadays with their cropped hair but he wasn’t wearing a boiler suit like before and his shoes were polished. She sat down and said to herself that the fellows can certainly iron their shirts nowadays. He had things to say about the courage of the soldiers and he felt they were doing an amazing job and he said it took something special to sign up and go out there and fight.
‘They have to go,’ she said. ‘It’s the war.’ The boy put down his cup and adopted a serious expression, which caused him to blush again and look worried.
‘Mrs Quirk, I said something today and I shouldn’t have said that in front of you. I’m sorry.’
‘What’s that, dear?’
‘I said about the news. That a soldier from around here had died in Afghanistan. It was on the radio in the van. And I shouldn’t have said that, Mrs Quirk. I listened to the report again. I’m sure it’s nothing to do with you because they always contact the families first.’
‘The men have to show courage,’ she said. ‘And go and fight for their country.’
‘Mrs Quirk—’
‘That’s what Harry said. And he was right. You take it on the chin and that’s true, son. You have to stand up and be counted. You’re all the man you’ll ever be. And when you get the call, that’s you.’
‘I’m daft sometimes. And it’s been bugging me since yesterday …’
He looked a little bit like some of the photographers she used to know. They were always out on the streets, those guys. They wanted to get away from studios and portraiture, all that stuff, lights and props, airbrushing. They were always young and confident. ‘You work for the Council?’
‘That’s right.’ He was a nice-looking man. He looked like the photographer Roger Mayne. She remembered seeing him in Manchester with Harry one time, this thin-faced, serious man with a lock of dark hair falling over his brow and these pictures he’d taken of children in London.
‘Those were fine pictures,’ she said.
‘They said the soldier who died was part of a big operation to do with a dam. I wrote it down.’ He took a note from his pocket and read from it. ‘The Kajaki dam. They said it was a big job to bring electricity to the Afghan people.’
‘I thought I was an old hand,’ she said. ‘Then I met Harry and all the younger ones. I’d been away from it for a while, looking after them in Glasgow. Then I came to Blackpool and met Harry. He changed the way the pictures looked. He showed me how to bring out the light, the eyes, the background, you know, and he taught everybody.’
‘Are you talking about your husband, Mrs Quirk?’
‘Harry. You remember him?’
The boy took his cup to the sink and ran it under the tap while Anne talked about them, the Young Meteors, the group of photographers surrounding Harry at Manchester in the 1960s. It did occur to Anne that the boy might be too young but he seemed part of it, the men who worked for Picture Post and for Kodak and … maybe she was boring him.
‘I’m really sorry, Mrs Quirk,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you and I should watch my mouth.’
‘You’re okay.’
He stared at her. It took him a moment. Then he stroked her hand and said he met a lot of elderly people because of his work for the council. His eyes were young. ‘I hope that wasn’t your Luke,’ he said. ‘My brother said they would definitely come round and tell the family ages before it was on the radio.’ He stood up and picked up his keys from the breakfast bar. Anne hoped he would stay because she wanted to talk about what to do with the stuff that was still down in the darkroom. It was nice to take pictures of children, she thought: they were only small for a short period of time and then it was over, wasn’t it?
Maureen noticed it had gone quiet next door during the time she was on the phone to Alice. She didn’t feel guilty but she hated to think it troubled Anne. It wasn’t as if Maureen didn’t have a family of her own: they were a full-time job, three grown kids and grandchildren into the bargain, and she only phoned Alice to make sure she understood everything that was happening. Since the rabbit, some people, some neighbours, had said that Anne’s daughter was too absent. But Maureen understood families and she wasn’t afraid to use the phone to try and help. It was late in the conversation that she turned to the day before.
‘Have you heard from anybody?’
‘Should I have?’
‘Not especially, no.’ Maureen pursed her lips and gathered herself. ‘That nurse was in again this week,’ she said. ‘Yesterday. They like to get your mother talking about her childhood and all sorts.’
‘All sorts is right,’ Alice said.
‘The illness makes her confused.’
‘She’s always been confused when it comes to the past. The fact is, Maureen, my mother’s always had issues with her memory. That’s what makes this so …’
‘Heartbreaking.’
‘Sad, yes. It’s sad. Sad for us. Because it’s now too late for my mother ever to face anything. If I was being unkind, I’d say that her illness has caught up with her character.’ Maureen sometimes felt a twinge at the idea that the criticism coming from Alice was general, as if Anne’s daughter was making comments about all mothers when she spoke about Anne and her problems. ‘Now she’s fantasising about a rabbit,’ added Alice, ‘but she was always fantasising about something. We’re used to it.’
‘The rabbit comes and goes.’
Alice responded with clarity. The people on TV, thought Maureen, are seldom so clear. ‘We’re used to my mother having relationships that keep us out. It’s one of her things. At least, it’s one of her things with me.’
‘You’re a mother yourself,’ Maureen said.
Alice swallowed hard and let the implication fad
e. She had never been the mother she wanted to be – it wasn’t allowed. And now she had to depend on the next-door neighbour to keep her informed about what was happening in her own family. It was pitiable, really. Anne had failed as a mother on nearly every front, but fantasy would carry her all the way. Everybody, including Alice’s own son Luke, would pity the sad life of sacrifice she had framed so perfectly for their eyes. Alice knew better. But why did that knowledge feel like a curse?
‘Mother seems to have told you a lot,’ she said.
‘That’s what it’s for, the Memory Club.’
‘And she spoke about Harry?’
‘Oh, yes. A lot about Harry.’
Alice felt that people kept her out of having information until she didn’t want it any more. ‘Well, thank you for phoning, Maureen. I really appreciate you taking the trouble.’
‘It’s no bother,’ Maureen said. They paused. The call hadn’t gone well, but Alice didn’t want to appear angry.
‘I pray for them at morning Mass,’ she said. It was clear that Alice needed to take strength at the mention of Harry.
‘Were you his child, Alice?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He got her pregnant.’
Each wanted to hang up, but they kept hoping for something more, a clever development in the conversation that would turn it into something nice. Maureen said her father was the person she missed all the time. ‘We used to run away to Glasgow together when I was wee,’ she said. ‘Just me and him and we had the whole day to ourselves. He used to take me to the perfume counter at Arnotts. We’d buy soap. And on the way back …’ She paused and Alice felt kindly towards her. ‘I always wished the train belonged to us and that we’d never have to get off.’
‘I had none of that,’ Alice said.
‘He called me Mog.’
‘I don’t think my father even remembered our names.’
‘Whose names?’
‘Ours,’ Alice said. She spoke reluctantly, feeling that she had gone far enough with Maureen. There was such yearning in Alice’s voice, as if she wished more than anything for things to be certain, but she knew they couldn’t be. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.
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