by Rosie Harris
Passers-by stopped to help pick them up but a great many of them were dirty, soiled and crumpled and so unfit for sale.
Betty felt like crying but, remembering that it was better to attack than be attacked, she reprimanded him for having his stand jutting out on the pavement and making it difficult for pedestrians.
‘Pedestrians manage all right,’ he shouted back. ‘I’ve never had anyone complain before. It’s that contraption you are driving. Motor vehicles should be on the road not on the pavement.’
‘This vehicle is not allowed on the road,’ Betty retorted. ‘It is designed to be driven on the pavement. You are the one at fault because your stand is taking up too much room on the pavement.’
They were sill glaring at each other when Tim appeared. His estate agency office was only a few doors further down the road and he had been on his way to buy a newspaper at the shop before he started work.
He quickly took in what had happened as he saw the state the papers were in, and was trying to apologize on behalf of his mother, but neither the newsagent nor his mother would listen to him.
In the end, Tim told the newsagent to send him a bill for any newspapers that were unsalable and steered his mother away from the scene.
‘It is all right, Mr Wilson, very kind of you but why should you recompense me for the mistake made by this silly old woman,’ the newsagent declared.
‘Because the “silly old woman” as you call her is my mother and this is the first time she has been out on her new three-wheeled scooter.’
Peter had returned from the doctors by the time Tim had escorted Betty back home, and he was frantic when he found she had gone out on the scooter on her own. He told Tim that he had planned to take her out and make sure she could use it the moment he got home.
Tim said he understood, but he still looked very disconcerted as he hurried away to start his own day.
‘I think we’d better go inside,’ Peter said as he laid a hand on the back of the scooter.
‘No, let’s got for a coffee,’ Betty suggested. ‘I really do need one.’
Peter smiled. ‘Very well, something to settle your nerves? Now take it easy,’ he went on, not waiting for her to reply. ‘Keep your speed down, there’s no hurry.’
They made their way to the coffee shop, Peter advised her where to park. She was still shaking a little when she dismounted so he held her arm as they walked to the door.
‘Coffee or chocolate?’ he asked.
‘Coffee please, and ask them to make it a strong one,’ she told him with a grin.
They sat for some time enjoying their drinks and until Betty was feeling more her old self.
‘Home now?’ Peter asked.
‘I suppose so,’ Betty agreed. ‘There are one or two things we need at the supermarket though. Perhaps we should get those on the way home.’
Peter mused. ‘You can wait outside while I pop in for them,’ he told her.
He listened to what she said they needed, repeated the list to make sure he remembered everything, and then hurried off.
As he was disappearing inside the door she remembered something else. She called him back but the automatic doors had closed and he didn’t hear her. She gave a resigned sigh, then decided to try her luck. It was silly to go without something when they were on the doorstep, and she really had had enough for one day and she didn’t want to come out again.
She toyed with the idea of leaving the scooter where it was parked and walking into the store, but the scooter wasn’t insured so imagine if someone took it while she was inside.
No, she couldn’t risk doing that, she told herself, she’d be extremely careful and only move at a snail’s pace then she couldn’t possibly do any harm.
She switched it on and approached the automatic doors which immediately opened and she was inside before she knew it. She looked for Peter but couldn’t see him so decided to go and pick up what she came in to buy and wait for him at the checkout.
She drove very slowly down the aisle, found what she wanted, and then reversed to go back to the checkout. As she did so there was a loud crash; she turned her head in horror to see that she had backed into a pyramid of cans that had been on display just behind her and that they had crashed to the ground and were rolling everywhere.
Betty felt so mortified that she couldn’t think what to do next. She wanted to call out to Peter and ask him to come and help, but she felt that would be making a spectacle of him as well as of herself. When several assistants and the store manager came rushing over towards her she tried to think rationally of what to say but she felt so stunned that she could have made the same mistake twice in such a short space of time that she couldn’t speak.
To her surprise, and relief, the manager didn’t seem angry about the accident but instead was very conciliatory and anxious to know if she was all right and not hurt in any way. He apologized for where the display had been and started to berate one of the assistants for putting it there.
Betty tried to stop him and explain it was her fault, when Peter appeared. He had heard the commotion and a sixth sense had told him that Betty was involved in some way.
He was quite angry with her, telling her she should have waited outside like he told her and refusing to accept her explanation of why she had come into the store.
‘I could always have popped back in for it,’ he told her.
Betty felt like crying but then she noticed that the manager was smiling and that some of the staff were laughing when Peter relayed her earlier mishap.
‘We only got the scooter yesterday and she hasn’t had a chance to try it out,’ he explained.
His remark set them off into fresh fits of laughter.
‘I think she has given us an excellent demonstration both on how not to drive a scooter and on how we should think carefully before erecting pyramids of cans as an advertising gimmick,’ the manager said.
‘Don’t let this little incident put you off coming in here again,’ he said addressing Peter and Betty. ‘Think of it as a valuable lesson for all of us.’
Thirty
As Betty became more and more used to handling the scooter their walks and shopping trips became more pleasant.
Peter was able to walk at his own pace and Betty had no trouble adjusting her speed. They also found it ideal when they went for their milk, bread and other groceries. No more heavy bags for Peter to carry; everything slipped neatly into the bag on the scooter.
They had also found a way to park it on the balcony so that it didn’t stop them enjoying the time they spent out there and allowed them still to have a small table and two comfortable chairs outside. Peter had arranged for a long cable to run from the living room out onto the balcony, and as soon as they came home the scooter was plugged in ready to use the next time Betty wanted to go out.
The only diversion from this was if it was raining and then, sometimes, they kept the scooter indoors not only to keep it dry but also because Peter had a dislike of plugging it in when it was raining.
‘Might be dangerous,’ he mumbled. In truth he was remembering some of his own accidents that had involved electricity and he was taking no chances.
The idea that the scooter was always ready for use made Betty eager to go out, but above all she wanted to go out on her own. Peter didn’t like the idea at all.
The opportunity for her to do so came one afternoon when she found that they had run out of milk. Peter was asleep and it seemed heartless to wake him simply to go across the road to get milk. Betty debated with herself whether to try making the journey with a stick, with her walker, or with the scooter. Common sense told her that the walker was the safest and most manageable, but she chose the scooter.
She would be very careful, she told herself, smiling as she recalled the incidents she’d been involved in the first time she had used the scooter.
Very cautiously she backed the scooter off the balcony and though the living room, hoping desperately that she wouldn’t wake
Peter. Once outside the flat she let out a sigh of relief as she pushed it along the corridor to the lift.
Out on the pavement she had a real feeling of achievement. She drove carefully, especially inside the supermarket. She collected the milk and, as a treat to celebrate the success of her adventure, she added two chocolate éclairs to have with the cup of tea she was going home to make.
She was almost halfway home when the scooter stopped dead. No matter what she did it wouldn’t move. The only thing she could think of was that the battery must have run out of power. She frowned. How could that have happened when it had been plugged in all night, she wondered.
She sat there for a moment wondering what to do. There was only one thing she could do and that was get off and push it. She found that wasn’t too difficult until she came to the small hill that led up to their flats. Suddenly the scooter seemed to have doubled its weight and after half a dozen steps she found her heart was racing and she felt so breathless she had to stop.
She was still panting when a youngish man approached.
‘Trouble?’ he said.
‘I think my battery is dead although it has been plugged in all night.’
He looked amused. ‘Let go,’ he told her. ‘I’ll give it a push to the top of the hill for you. Have you far to go after that?’
‘No, only across the road,’ Betty told him.
He walked so fast that for one frightening moment Betty thought he was stealing her scooter. Desperately she tried to walk faster. If only she had brought a stick with her, she thought as she slowly made her way up the small hill, her breath rasping with each step.
‘Are you alright now, missus?’ he asked as she reached him. ‘There you are then. Sure you can make it the rest of the way?’
She nodded her thanks, almost too breathless to speak. ‘Very good of you,’ she gasped, as she took the scooter from him and leaned heavily on it, trying to calm down.
She was still panting when she got back to the flat and, as she wheeled the scooter out of the lift, she began to think it was going to be too much of an effort for her to wheel it along the corridor to their flat.
As she bumped her way through their front door Peter woke up and was immediately alert when he saw the state she was in.
‘What’s happened, have you had an accident?’ he asked struggling out of his chair to come over and help her.
Betty shook her head, she was beyond speaking, all she wanted to do was sit down before her knees gave way. Peter helped her into a chair and then went into the kitchen to make some tea. It didn’t take him a minute because the water in the kettle was already hot. When he looked for the milk he realized what had happened.
‘You went out for milk,’ he said accusingly.
Betty nodded.
‘Wait until you’ve got your breath back and then tell me,’ he said. He finished making the tea and brought her a cup. ‘Mind it’s not too hot, would you like me to put a splash of cold water in it?’
Betty nodded. They sat there in silence while she drank. Peter kept looking at her in such a worried way that as soon as she had her breath back Betty gasped, ‘There hasn’t been an accident; I’m not hurt. I’m puffed out from pushing that damn scooter.’
‘What were you pushing it for, have you forgotten how to drive it?’ Peter asked with a puzzled frown.
‘It conked out on me,’ Betty told him in an exasperated voice. ‘Just as I came to the hill. A chap came to my aid and pushed it up the hill for me but I still found it hard work getting it home.’
‘What do you mean that it conked out?’
‘It stopped dead. Nothing I did was any good. The only answer was to get off and push.’
‘That’s strange,’ Peter muttered. He put down his cup of tea and went over to the scooter. He tried to switch it on but it was completely dead.
‘Flat battery, but I can’t understand why that is,’ Peter mused. ‘It’s been on charge all night.’
‘That’s what I told this chap and he said it might need a new battery as it wasn’t holding the charge.’
‘Rubbish! Didn’t you tell him the scooter was less than a year old?’
‘Well, I suppose it could have been used a lot while it was still in the showrooms, demonstrating it and that sort of thing.’
Peter didn’t answer. He picked up the cable, examined the plug and the socket and then began running his hand along the cable to see if there were any breaks in it. When he reached the room plug he stopped with a loud exclamation.
‘Something wrong?’ Betty asked.
‘Wrong! I’ll say there is. It wasn’t plugged in!’
They looked at each other for a moment then both of them burst into laughter.
‘You plugged it in,’ Betty told him.
‘Yes, but I must have knocked it out when I was using the vacuum cleaner,’ he told her.
Again, they laughed. ‘Another lesson to be learnt,’ Peter said. ‘From now on we check the plug before we go to bed.’
Betty agreed, but even though they had both laughed about the incident, she did wonder which of them was responsible. Had she accidentally unplugged it in order to use the socket for her iron, or had Peter done it when he vacuumed earlier in the day. They would probably never know, but it worried her than neither of them could remember changing the plug over at any time that day.
Were they both becoming forgetful? Was this the next stage in growing old? She knew she sometimes had trouble remembering where things were when she had put them away safely, or being unable to recall people’s names when relating something to Peter, but then so did he. He blamed it on the fact that he no longer had a shed or workshop when it came to remembering where a certain tool was and had to hunt through the drawers in the kitchen to try and find it.
Betty sighed. There was not a lot either of them could do about their memories going, even young people couldn’t remember names or where they’d put things, she told herself.
Neither of them mentioned the incident again but, nevertheless, she paid attention to where she did put things for the next week or two so that she wouldn’t be caught out again as she didn’t want Peter to think she couldn’t remember. From the concentration on his face when he was putting tools away after using them, she thought he was probably doing the same.
They made the most of the summer sunshine although their walks became shorter and shorter. Peter blamed it on the heat but Betty suspected that he was slowing down.
If she asked him where he’d like to go when they went out on one of their walks he more often said either the park or the library, and she suspected that it was because at both places he could sit down for ten or twenty minutes to regain his breath and energy.
She was so tired of these trips that some days she longed to go for a really long ride on her scooter on her own. After all, she told herself, that was one of the reasons for getting it; so that she could go further afield than was possible with the walker.
She even began hoping that perhaps one of these days Peter would say that he felt too tired to go for a walk and then she would have the perfect excuse to go off on her own.
As his walking became more limited she suggested that he might like to use her walker. At first, he refused to even consider the idea.
‘Think how daft we would look me pushing a walker trailing after you riding the scooter.’
‘Then you use the scooter and I’ll use the walker,’ she told him. ‘I don’t mind trailing behind you. Or you could adjust your speed so that I walked in front and you followed me.’
Again, Peter scorned the idea of them going for a walk in that manner.
Then, one day, when he complained his leg was hurting, he did. He agreed that it made walking far easier but he wanted to go out on his own.
‘Of course I don’t mind,’ she told him when he asked. ‘You can walk down to the park using the walker and I’ll follow you on the scooter. Or we’ll do it the other way round, whichever you prefer.’
They agreed that Peter should go first because it would take him longer and that Betty would follow.
The moment he was out of sight Betty set out. Elated by her freedom, she decided she wouldn’t go straight to the park but have a little ride around first.
It was wonderful to be able to explore roads she hadn’t been down before, and also along roads that she used to know quite well but hadn’t visited for a long time. After about a quarter of an hour she decided she had better go to the park or Peter would be getting anxious about why she hadn’t joined him.
At the end of the road she was on she paused to try and decide which was the quickest way to get to the park. To her annoyance, she couldn’t think where she was. She went to the next turning and felt equally lost. This is crazy, she told herself. She knew all these roads well, knew where they led and should have known the best route to take to the park – but suddenly she didn’t.
Finally, in desperation, she stopped a passer-by and asked if they knew the way.
The moment the woman gave her directions she knew at once where she was and felt annoyed with herself that she had needed help.
She drove as fast as she could, hoping Peter wouldn’t be worried and trying to think of an excuse as to why she was late. She certainly wouldn’t tell him that she had lost her way and couldn’t remember how to get there.
Thirty-One
When she arrived at the park Peter didn’t seem to notice she was late. In fact, he said nothing when Betty parked the scooter alongside his walker and sat down beside him on the wooden park bench.
‘How are you?’ she asked as she unbuttoned her coat to make herself more comfortable.
He stared at her and then frowned. ‘Fine and yourself?’ he said politely.
‘Yes, I’m OK. Sorry I took so long to get here.’
‘There was no need for you to come at all. I only came out for a breath of fresh air,’ he said in a slightly irritated voice, avoiding her eyes and looking straight ahead into space.