Mira is using her zimmer frame for the first time, hobbling slowly and painfully to the hallway from the front room where she’s been sleeping these past few weeks.
‘Excellent! Good work!’ says Bethan, the physio. ‘We’ll soon have you back to normal.’
Mira stops in front of a picture on the wall, a lurid pastel portrait of a crying child in a knitted bonnet.
‘Do you know who this is?’ she says, letting go of the zimmer to straighten the frame.
‘Careful!’ says Bethan.
‘This is my husband,’ says Mira, ‘as a small child’
‘They gathered that,’ says John, her son, holding on to the door, his arm making an arch for her to pass under. ‘Come on, mum. Keep it moving. Keep it moving.’
‘Would you like to know why he was crying like this?’
‘Oh god. You’re going to get the guided tour now,’ says John.
‘It was Vidovdan, feast day. My husband’s Baka had made a wonderful torte, beautifully spread with segments of apple and pear, glistening with the most marvelous jelly and topped with fresh whipped cream. And he just couldn’t resist it. So he dragged his finger across the top, and then he stuck his finger in his mouth. Of course, when his Baka came in she was furious, and she smacked him – like this – on his hand. What you do this for? she said to him. Who will want to eat my lovely torte now you’ve wiped your dirty paws all over it? And he cried and he cried and he cried – just like the picture. And his Baka said to him, she said Why are you crying so much? I did not think I hit you as hard as all that. No he said I’m crying because I made you sad. And that was why they had this picture made of him.’
‘Yeah. And I bet they had to pinch him a few times to keep him going.’
‘John!’ says Mira. ‘Don’t listen to him. He misses Papa as much as I do.’
We continue walking towards the hallway.
They’re an odd couple, Mira and John. She is so small and frail, and her son so huge, it’s difficult to imagine her ever giving birth to him.
‘It might be quicker if I just put you over my shoulder,’ he says, checking his watch. ‘Mind you, I’m not sure I could these days. I carried a heavy machine gun and a radio when I was in the army. Well – it was a few years ago. I was twenty-six, the big man. Seemed like a good idea at the time.’
sketches
glad & buttons
‘The physio should be here soon,’ I say, finishing off my notes and putting them in the folder.
‘She’ll have trouble parking,’ says Moira. ‘It’s absolutely terrible round here.’
‘My grandson’s got a car that parks itself,’ says Glad.
Glad is Moira’s domestic help. It’s a funny arrangement. Glad is as elderly as Moira, but she gamely drags herself around the place with a duster and a bin bag. ‘You pull up, push a button and off it goes. Don’t ask me how it works. I wouldn’t have a clue. I can’t even work the radio.’
‘Yes. It’s incredible how these things have come on,’ says Moira, sitting in her riser-recliner, her hands placidly folded in her lap.
‘I expect in the future we’ll all be flying around in silver balloons,’ says Glad. ‘You’ll probably park on the roof and come down the chimney. I won’t be around to see it though, thank God. Here – what d’you want doing with these?’
She holds out a bunch of magazines, the top one Good Housekeeping, Mary Berry on the front. Moira looks a lot like Mary Berry, making allowances for the nightie, dressing gown and absence of make-up. They share the same haughty benevolence.
‘Oh I don’t know,’ says Moira. ‘Perhaps the hairdressers might want it. Or just recycle.’
‘Righto,’ says Glad, hobbling with her gammy hip to the side table by the door where she drops the magazines and then opens a cupboard to fetch out the hoover.
‘Look at this beauty!’ she says, pulling out a brand new, highly technical-looking Bosch. ‘Light as a feather. And the suck on it. Not too noisy, neither. And see this button? You press that when you’re done, and it puts itself back in the cupboard.’
She turns the thing on and starts pushing it backwards and forwards.
‘I’m lying about the button,’ she says. ‘Lift your feet, love.’
a tale of two women
I.
Maud is asleep on the ottoman.
‘She’s exhausted’ whispers her granddaughter, Eve. ‘We thought it best if we let her rest a while’
Maud couldn’t be more comfortable, a pile of crisp white pillows behind her head and a richly patterned duvet tucked around her.
‘Come and have a seat,’ says Eve. ‘We’ll wake her up in a minute.’
Eve leads me to a heavy oak dining table in the middle of the room, where Eve’s mother Lucy and Lucy’s sister, Beth are waiting.
‘Thanks for coming,’ says Beth, standing up to shake my hand.
‘It’s good of you,’ says Lucy. ‘Everyone’s been so kind.’
We take our seats.
It would make a good painting. The Visit. A broad and comfortable room, naturally lit by the low winter sun through the patio windows, a collection of old prints and portraits hung around the walls, ferns in planters, a baby grand covered with an antique shawl and a spread of family photos in simple, silver frames – and then the focus of the picture, the loving family leaning in on three sides of the table, me with my open folder, pen in hand, and Maud, snoozing in the background.
‘Can you just go over for me why Maud was taken to hospital in the first place?’ I say.
‘It was just before Christmas,’ says Lucy. ‘Mummy’s always been fiercely independent. She doesn’t like fuss and she’s absolutely resisted any attempt to get some help in with the garden.’
‘Imagine!’ smiles Eve.
‘Quel horreur!’ says Lucy, shaking her head.
‘Anyway. That’s the context. What we think happened is that Mummy was out there planting bulbs and having a bit of a tidy up – overdoing things as usual – came in and then suffered some sort of collapse. Not a stroke or her heart or anything. More a kind of giving out or a weakness in her legs. Whatever the reason, down she went and couldn’t get up again. Wasn’t wearing her red button, of course.’
‘I think it’s upstairs on the bathroom door,’ says Lucy.
‘Exactly. So there she was, down on the floor, and she just couldn’t get herself up again. The best she could manage was to shuffle about a bit – although not as far as the phone, sadly. Malcolm, a good friend and neighbour who lives just across the way, well Malcolm saw the light on quite late and rang Mummy to ask if everything was all right. When she didn’t answer he came over and let himself in with the key we’d given him…’
‘Thank God!’ says Beth.
‘…thank God!’ says Lucy. ‘Thank Malcolm! As soon as he found Mummy on the floor he called the ambulance. They were a while getting here, so once Malcolm had established that Mummy hadn’t broken any bones and so on, he helped her up and waited with her for the paramedics. She had every test you could think of at the hospital. Really – everyone’s been so kind….’
‘Absolutely!’ says Beth. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘…just amazing, actually. But aside from the usual wear-and-tear of Mummy’s osteoarthritis and her habit of doing too damned much, they couldn’t find anything wrong.’
‘A bit of a chest infection…’ says Beth.
‘Oh yes. The chest infection,’ says Ruth. ‘Beyond that, who can say? We’ve got some carers starting this evening. I think Mummy’s been given a bit of a frightener by all of this and she’s finally agreed to some help. One of us will stay tonight and however long it takes to get her back to strength. But she is ninety, you know. You can’t go on pretending you’re a young woman forever.’
And we all turn to look at Maud, fast asleep on the ottoman.
II.
‘I’m ninety, you know!’
‘I can’t believe that!’ I say, touching Renee lightly on the arm. I have to admit it’s a lie, though. One of her eyes is permanently closed, giving her a lopsided, leering look, and when she speaks – with difficulty – she rolls up her mouth at the end of each sentence, taking most of the lower half of her face with it.
Rene is stuck on the commode. She wasn’t able to pull up her nightie, and opening her bowels has resulted in a mess that’s going to take some deft manoeuvring to sort out. At least I’m here with my colleague, Helen, though. Together we manage to stand Renee up, and whilst Helen keeps her steady, I set to work with quantities of tissue and wet wipes.
‘Sorry about that,’ she says.
‘Don’t worry, Renee.’
After a while she says: ‘We’ll have to take the decorations down soon.’
I glance up at the walls. There are three lines of red tinsel stuck with masking tape to the crumbling plaster above the fireplace – not delicate strips of tape; the kind you tear off in a hurry and slap on.
‘Shame. It goes so quickly,’ says Helen, adjusting her position as I struggle to free some more wipes.
‘Yes,’ says Renee. ‘Still. It can’t be Christmas all the time or it wouldn’t be special.’
Her son Graham watches us from the other side of the room. He seems to do a lot of that. He was watching at the front door as I parked the car, not waving back when I did, or even saying hello, merely turning with a flat, mildly irritated look and disappearing inside, like a bear plodding back into its cave when it finds winter still has a way to go.
‘How is she?’ he says, as we struggle to get her nightie over her head.
‘Not sure.’
A microwave dings in the kitchen.
‘D’you mind if I get my dinner?’
‘Go ahead!’ says Helen, dropping the soiled clothing into a bag.
After a minute or two Graham reappears with a plastic dish of curry. Instead of taking it upstairs or out back, he sits on the side of Renee’s hospital bed, and starts tucking in with a spoon.
‘Sure you don’t mind?’ he says.
It’s disquieting to see just how exactly the food looks like the mess we’ve just dealt with.
‘Absolutely,’ I say. ‘Smells good.’
larry
Mrs Waring has been diagnosed with BPPV – Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. One of those conditions that’s as difficult to pronounce as it is to treat.
‘Her husband’s been admitted with a stroke,’ says the Coordinator, ‘so the stress of all that isn’t helping matters. I think she has a good network of friends, but she’s eighty-odd and vulnerable.’ She hands me the paperwork. ‘Retired district nurse,’ she says. ‘Watch out.’
-oOo-
If the bungalow is quiet when I walk up to the door, it changes the moment I ring the bell. A dog starts barking somewhere deep within the house, and a second later hurls itself against the door, repeatedly impacting the frosted pane like a hairy brown and white football being kicked against the glass.
Larry! Larry! says a woman’s voice, but the dog only interprets that as an instruction to try harder. He changes tactic and starts trying to rip out the letterbox, presumably to make a hole big enough to squeeze through and reach my throat.
Just come straight in! the woman calls. He’ll be alright.
It’s an act of faith to do it, but Larry’s obviously a small dog, and even though I know the smallest dogs have the biggest complexes, I’m reasonably confident I can handle anything he throws at me. Still, mindful of the sharpness of little teeth, I slide the rucksack off my back and hold it low in front of me as I slowly open the door.
‘Good boy! There’s a good boy!’
Larry backs up, adding a few apoplectic sneezes to his barks, and starts turning wild circles on the spot, like he’s winding himself up to helicopter the distance between his jaws and my throat.
Mrs Waring appears round the sitting room door on all fours.
‘Oh! Hello!’ I say, putting my bag to one side (Larry jumps on it, grabs hold of one of the straps and begins shaking it from side to side, flipping me looks between each thrashing, as if to say: You’re next). ‘Are you alright?’
‘Yes, I’m fine’ she says, in a clipped tone, as if there’s absolutely nothing in her behaviour to suggest otherwise.
‘Have you fallen? Are you hurt?’
‘Not at all,’ she says. ‘Larry! Will you stop that, please?’
Amazingly, Larry lets go of the bag, looks at Mrs Waring for a moment, then trots over to sniff around my trousers.
‘He likes you,’ she says. ‘That’s a start.’
I kneel down on the carpet.
‘So tell me how you ended up on the floor,’ I say.
‘It’s very dull,’ she says. ‘I had another dizzy episode so I lowered myself down before I fell. I’ve done it before.’
‘Are you in pain?’
‘No. Just a little woozy. Now look, could I ask you to do something for me?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s a bit cheeky, I know, but you see – Larry needs his breakfast and I think that’s why he’s being such a pest. If he doesn’t get his breakfast he won’t leave us alone. So if you wouldn’t mind, could you give him some of the meat that’s on the top of the fridge? You’ll find a pink bowl on the draining board and a fork with a broken handle. He doesn’t need much. His stomach’s the size of a mouse.’
Larry has obviously recognised some of the keywords here, because he stops sniffing and sits on his haunches to stare up at me. He’s a funny-looking dog, a cross between a Chihuahua and a Jack Russell, with a few chromosomes of Fruit Bat sprinkled on top for good measure. He’s obviously as elderly as Mrs Waring, a wiry, lopsided sneer to his muzzle, like a grizzled old gunslinger deludedly thinking he can still outdraw anything that rings the bell.
‘He’ll be in a better mood when he’s had some breakfast,’ says Mrs Waring.
As if to demonstrate, Larry starts barking again when I stand up to go into the kitchen, and doesn’t stop until I’ve finished scraping some meat out into the bowl.
Meanwhile, Mrs Waring has crawled into the kitchen, too.
‘Show me how much you’ve given him,’ she says.
I bend down to show her the bowl.
‘Too much,’ she says. ‘He’ll be sick.’
I scrape out a portion and present the bowl to her again, acutely aware that if anyone took a photograph of this scene through the kitchen window, it wouldn’t read well in the press. (Broken Britain: Nurse treats elderly woman like a dog).
‘Still too much!’ she says. ‘Lose a third and you might be right.’
I do as she says, and finally get the go-ahead.
Larry clears the bowl in three furious snaps, then starts barking again.
‘I don’t think it’s worked,’ I say.
‘Nonsense,’ says Mrs Waring, turning round to crawl out of the kitchen and into the living room. ‘He just doesn’t like strangers watching him eat.’
it’s never too late for a nice day
[After ten minutes of knocking and waiting, Mrs Gribbins eventually comes to the door. She’s wearing a quilted blue housecoat, a red scarf round her head, her arm in a collar-and-cuff support. Her face is the same colour as her scarf.]
MrsG: What the hell do you want?
ME: Hello, Mrs Gribbins. I’m sorry to disturb you.
MrsG: No, you’re not
ME: I did ring to say I was coming, but it went to answer machine.
MrsG: You should give me longer to get to the phone. I can’t run about like you.
ME: No. Well – I’m sorry about that.
MrsG: Don’t you know it’s Sunday?
ME: Yep. But I’ve been asked to come and see you to make sure you’re okay. And unfortunately you were first on my list.
[She stares at me]
Specifically – they want me to look at the wound on your arm.
MrsG: How am I supposed to get better if you people keep bothering me?
ME: Well that’s just it, you see? The doctor’s asked us to visit and see you’re okay.
MrsG: What doctor?
ME: [hesitantly] I’ve got it written down somewhere…
MrsG: You don’t know, do you? You come round here, dragging me out into the cold all hours of the day and night. How’m I supposed to get better with you carrying on like that?
ME: I was told your dressing needed changing.
MrsG: By this doctor, I suppose? This mystery doctor no-one’s heard of?
ME: I’ve definitely got it written down somewhere. But it’s fine, Mrs Gribbins. Honestly. If you really don’t want anyone coming round, you don’t have to.
MrsG: It’s ridiculous. You can see I’m alright.
ME: Well actually – I can’t. Not from here.
MrsG: I’ve never been treated like this before. Not ever.
ME: I’m sorry you feel like that. It’s all with the best of intentions. The fact is people are worried about you and want to make sure you’re okay. But like I say – you’re perfectly entitled to say no thanks, and we’ll leave it at that.
MrsG: And you won’t knock on my door again?
ME: No. I’ll just refer you back to the care of your doctor. The doctor I’ve got written down somewhere.
MrsG: [warily, like she doesn’t quite believe it] I don’t mean to be rude.
ME: It’s okay. Don’t worry. Let’s just shake – by your good hand – and we’ll say no more about it.
MrsG: I need time to get better.
ME: Absolutely. Bye, then, Mrs Gribbins.
MrsG: Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again.
ME: Have a nice day.
MrsG: A nice day? [She gives the shoulder of her bad arm a tentative shrug] It’s a bit late for that.
character phones
Tony has a range of character phones. Tweety Pie, Hello Kitty, Bugs Bunny and so on. All of them bravely maintaining their expressions beneath the same grimy brown patina that covers everything in Tony’s room. It’s an astonishing thing, a dismal, bristling crust that wouldn’t look out of place on the wreck of a ship at the bottom of the Atlantic. And if this was a ship, I’d guess, through the visor of my mask, that I’d swum into the nursery, because encircling the whole room are three shelves, each of which is packed full of toys and childish souvenirs of every description: elephants, camels, teddy bears and finger drums, Chad Valley projectors and unidentifiable things in snow globes, figurines in decaying boxes from shows I’ve never heard of – the whole, mouldering cargo merging one thing into another, in one great soup of neglect.
‘Quite a collection you’ve got,’ I say as I take his blood pressure.
‘Inherited,’ he sniffs. ‘I had six relatives all die in the space of two years. I got rid of what I could. The rest just stayed.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was a bad time that’s for sure,’ he says, rolling his sleeve down again. He coughs – such a sludgy sound it’s hard to resist the idea that his lungs are coated in the same noxious matter as the rest of the room. ‘I fell ill. And then my support worker died.’
‘How awful!’
‘He dropped dead in this room, right about where you’re standing now.’
blown away
‘What d’you think of that picture?’
‘Which one? This one?’ (standing in front of a large, colour print of the sea during a storm).
‘Yeah. What d’you think?’
I take a step back and take it in. The sky, low, intensely dark, a few shreds of ghastly white cloud riding ahead like the tormented souls of drowned sailors making it home at last; the sea, ragged, wild, one giant wave in the foreground folding over in a gigantic stack of water to crash onto the beach, only just falling short of a tiny figure – man? woman? it’s impossible to tell – who is leaning into the wind with one hand on their hat and one arm outstretched, their raincoat flaring behind them.
‘Pretty dramatic!’ I say. ‘Who took it? You?’
‘I tied myself to the railings so’s not to get blown away.’
I turn back to the picture.
‘So who’s that on the beach? A wizard?’
‘I dunno. Some nutcase. But I think it’s the best picture I ever took. Yep. I’m pretty proud of that one.’
‘I wonder what happened to him?’
‘‘I think he lost ‘is ‘at.’
one hell of a grip
There’s a black and white photo of Glenda on the wall taken when she was a young woman in the Land Army. She’d obviously dressed up for the picture, because although she’s still in fatigues, her hair is nicely swept back in a wide band, and her lipstick is in a perfect bow. It’s a great shot. Glenda’s smile is so bright and enthusiastic and full of energy, I can imagine her pulling the spade out of the soil and advancing on the world, waving it overhead.
‘They shipped us off to Berkshire,’ she says. ‘I hated that farmer. We all did. Picking potatoes in the rain. He always used to drive the tractor too quick for us. We couldn’t keep up. I used to throw potatoes at him to slow him down. And he’d shout back You throw another one of them fuckin’ potatoes at me, Glenda, and you see what happens.’
‘And did you?’
‘Course I did. He didn’t scare me.’
‘What happened?’
‘We all went on strike. We sat down in the middle of the field and refused to budge. He ranted and raved. You get back to work now or you’ll see what for he said. But he was like that. Full of wind.’
‘He sounds horrible.’
‘Oh – he wasn’t too bad once you got to know his ways. He just needed someone to show him who was the real boss round there. I remember this one time, I was up on a hay rick and I saw a mouse. Well – if there’s one thing I absolutely detest and cannot abide, it’s a mouse. But where you goin’ to run when you’re standing on the top of a hay rick? You silly cow – it’s only a fucking mouse he said. You come up here and deal with it, if you’re such an expert I said, and threw the pitchfork at him. But he didn’t know, you see? He didn’t know how much I hate mice. And rats. I can’t stand rats.’
‘Maybe he should’ve got a dog. To catch the rats.’
‘He did have a dog, a Jack Russell, called Gravel. Vicious, pointy little thing.’
‘So I’m guessing you didn’t have such a great time in the Land Army then?’
‘Oh no. We had a great laugh. There was a prisoner of war camp down the road, full of Eye-talians. We used to hang around the fence and pass carrots through the wire. ‘Ere. Get away from there! the guards used to say. Drop them carrots! Didn’t bother us, though. They needed fresh food and attention. And so did we.’
Whilst we’re talking, there’s a sudden, soggy thump behind me, like an albatross just flew into the window.
‘Window man’s here,’ says Glenda, easing her position in the chair. ‘They have to do it on a long pole these days, ever since the last one fell off his ladder. D’you know something? I was brought up in a tenement block in Ladbroke Grove. Six floors up we were. And every Sunday my mum used to sit out on the ledge to clean the outside. Hold me legs, Glenda she used to say. And I’d be hanging on for dear life, her stockings slipping down, and I’d be shouting For God’s sake, Mum. Haven’t you finished yet? I’m losing yah! And she’d shout back Don’t be so silly, Glenda. Just hold me legs! Her voice all muffled like, because she was the other side of the window, and I had one ear in her lap. And she’d be out there, cheerful as you like, scrubbing the window singing away as easy as if she was polishing the mirror in the bathroom. She was good, my mum. And she certainly had a head for heights.’
Glenda seems distracted for a moment, brushing some biscuit crumbs from her lap.
‘And you might not think to look at me now,’ she carries on at last. ‘But I tell you what – I had one hell of a grip.’
things that float & go bump
A couple of the nurses are sitting with the Co-ordinator, chatting about this and that at the end of the shift.
‘I’m sure that house is haunted’ says Lena. ‘Every time I go there something weird happens.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Just weird. Like – atmospheres or something.’
‘My mum and dad had a poltergeist for a while,’ says Rachel, flipping through a file, so matter-of-fact it’s like she’s just turning to a section called Paranormal Manifestations and What to Do About Them.
‘What d’you mean for a while? Did they have it exorcised?’
‘Not really. We got to the bottom of it ourselves.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Well – they sold up and moved to this spooky new house on the Yorkshire Moors. It used to be the parrot house of a big old stately home…’
‘The Parrot house?’
‘Where they used to keep parrots.’
‘Makes sense’
‘It’s pretty isolated. Just the main house which is all converted into flats now. A few outbuildings. And then the parrot house, standing on its own at the edge of the land. And then beyond that, you’ve got the moors, stretching out all bleak and mysterious, with a load of sheep and goats grazing and generally wandering about.’
‘Why the hell’d they go there?’
‘They wanted to get away from it all.’
‘Sounds like they did.’
‘Absolutely. It’s nice enough when the sun’s shining. Anyway – they said to me the place was lovely and everything but might be a little bit haunted. So I said fine, I’ll have a look. The first night, everything was quiet, fine, nothing strange about it except for those creaky noises you always get in old houses.’
‘I hate them.’
‘But the following morning when we all came down to breakfast, the heavy rug in the front room was pushed all the way over to one side, rucked up against the sofa.’
‘That’s what gets me about ghosts. They never do anything constructive. Hundreds of years to plan their revenge or whatever, and all they end up doing is arsing around with the furniture.’
‘Yeah – but turns out, this wasn’t a ghost. It was just a static charge building up between the rug and the stone flags, so overnight it kind of floated across the floor. We put some anti-static strips down, and it sorted it out a treat.’
Nice.’
‘The second night was different though. We’d all sat down to watch Strictly, when suddenly the television shot across the room and smashed against the wall’
‘Oh my God! That’s terrifying! You can’t tell me that was static.’
‘No. Turns out the aerial was hanging loose outside, a goat caught his horn in it and dragged the TV across the room when he tried to run off.’
moira
Moira’s mouth has a tragic and graven quality, down-turned, thinly incised, which, along with her hooded eyelids and watery blue eyes, gives her a profoundly disapproving expression, something you could imagine at Judgement Day, looking out across the smoking ruins of the world, with a caption in Gothic script that reads: I told you so.
‘I spent a great deal on his education so it’s about time he started paying some of it back,’ she says, the point of her elbow dug into the armrest so she can hold her bandaged hand straight up in the air like a courtroom exhibit.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Simon? Yesterday. He stayed the absolute minimum and then he was off to another meeting. I said to him: What’s more important – work, or the health of your mother? I won’t be here much longer. If it’s going to go on like this, the sooner I go, the better.’
‘Where does Simon live?’
‘Where doesn’t he live. It’s absurd. He’s got enormous houses all over the place and he spends most of his time in hotels.’
‘Couldn’t you move in with him?’
She turns her eyes on me.
‘He’s a businessman, dear. Not a saint.’
It’s been a long and difficult assessment. Moira has the issue of her hand, of course, but it strikes me that her biggest problem is depression, a bleak and palpable thing that sucks all the light and life from the air, like a black hole opened up in a riser-recliner and someone tried to disguise it with a dressing-gown.
‘I asked Jenny upstairs if she could go out and get me a paper. And d’you know what she said?’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said No.’
‘No?’
‘No. Just like that.’
‘Pretty harsh.’
‘Harsh? I’ve known her twenty years. I think it’s positively murderous.’
She pats her hair with her bad hand and then winces as she lowers it back to her lap.
‘I shan’t be bothering her again,’ she says.
The phone rings. Moira mutters and frowns.
‘Shall I get it for you?’ I say.
‘I’m not dead yet,’ she says, and then makes a huge, sighing deal of picking up, reciting the name of the town and the phone number when the handset eventually makes it up to her ear, as brave as a telephonist being martyred at the stake, making one last connection amongst the flames.
Oh. It’s you… Well how d’you think I’m getting on? … I’m not, and that’s the whole point… Yes, he’s here now… How should I know what he thinks? He just sits there making approximate noises… Not at the moment, no. I haven’t finished with him yet. When I have I’ll get him to call you… Yes, thank you. I think I have everything I need – excepting a son who gives a damn.
And she hangs up.
‘That was Simon’
‘I guessed.’
She observes me closely.
‘He sends his regards,’ she says, after a very long while.
jim clayton 