The Windsurf Boy, page 15
‘Enough. Yet is it enough?’ With sudden discontent she stretched her body like a cat, and brooded, half-ashamed. Her waking dreams centred upon Matthew; he banished even the thought of William from her mind, and for that, for depriving her of memory, Anna was not always grateful. In the cottage he made the furniture look pale and shabby, and when he picked up an object like an ashtray or a book, glancing at it idly before putting it down in a different place, those clean fingers tanned by the wind as they clung to the wishbone booms disturbed a cherished thing that suddenly lost all life. One day he flung himself down upon the window seat to gaze at the river, and Anna, pinched by his apparent boredom, heard the old wood creak and crack under his weight.
Tom was oblivious of such moments of boredom. Sometimes Anna ached at the openness of his admiration, his love, and at the way he expected Matthew to play with Lego and cars, as if he too was a child and could be trusted. She dreaded the moment when her child would see, would realise that the older boy would come until the time he ceased to want to come – and in that instant Tom would gain a bitter foretaste of all the loss and longing that would fill his life, until the day that he, like his grandmother, lay somewhere upon an iron bed, waiting.
Molly Black had telephoned the night before, timidly, to ask if Anna would please take in a book, and some magazines, that is if she … ‘Yes, I’ll be going tomorrow,’ Anna said hastily, angry to be exposed.
Anna deposited The End of the Affair and two thick, glossy women’s magazines upon the bed, and looked around the room. Some more roses had been given dimension in her mother’s tapestry, but that was the only change. Without its occupant the room seemed drained, colourless; Anna felt surprise that Barbara, though frail, still possessed the capacity to transform her surroundings, just as she would when, years ago, she would visit Anna in her student rooms, and leave fireside light behind when she had gone.
The wardrobe door was open, and Anna looked in. There was one dress and one jersey suit on hangers, another dressing gown, and a pile of folded nightdresses on the shelf. That was all. Wire hangers hung empty, rattling slightly as Anna moved the door. ‘And when I was a child I used to hide in her wardrobe, and lose myself amongst the rows and rows of coats and dresses, until Richard, who always knew, found me there and gave me a fright.’ She had always dreamt of approaching the big mahogany wardrobe in her parents’ bedroom and passing through it into a world of talking beasts, but in her dreams there was no witch and no lion, no threat of evil or promise of redemption, simply a painted fairtytale scene framed by her mother’s pretty clothes. The emptiness of this veneered cupboard shocked Anna. There was nothing to hide amongst, nothing to pass through, and the back of the wardrobe showed clearly for what it was – cheap wood, but solid for all that.
‘Hallo, dear. What are you looking for?’ Barbara stood in the door, supporting herself against its frame. Her face was grey; she was panting and holding one thin hand across her chest. Anna could not suppress a small cry of shock at her appearance, and stood with one hand stretched out, but not moving.
‘Where’s Tom?’
‘Oh, he’s with that boy Matthew.’
Barbara shuffled forward, touching the wall at intervals, and waving aside (though gently) Anna’s sudden movement towards her. Lowering herself into the armchair Barbara threw back her head, trying to regain her breath, so that Anna saw the white skin of her neck, its slackness stretched taut and the adam’s apple fluttering as Barbara swallowed again and again. ‘What is it, Mummy? You don’t look well.’ As soon as the words were out Anna saw the absurdity, and bit her lips.
‘What were you looking for in there?’ Barbara repeated. ‘Did you want a tissue, or something?’
‘No, just closing the door. It was open. But, Mummy, where are your clothes? All your clothes, I mean?’
‘Oh, those. Well, one or two things are folded up in cases and with the furniture in store. You and Hilda can go through them later. Shouldn’t think you’d want much of it, only there’s that rather nice beaded cape, and the musquash stole, and Hilda always liked the green velvet...’
‘Don’t, Mummy, please,’ interrupted Anna.
‘I sent all the rest away to Oxfam and the church jumble sales. No point in keeping any of it – old jumpers and things like that. You wouldn’t want any of them, would you?’
‘But you might want them, that’s the point.’
Barbara looked straight at Anna, and shook her head. ‘Don’t think so, somehow, darling.’
‘But how do you know? Dr Jacobs told me …’
‘Anna, I don’t care what he told you, I know. I am the person to know.’ Barbara’s voice was firm, but Anna refused to give up. She sat down, took a breath, and consciously made her voice cajoling, ‘I know you are. I understand the way you feel, but I don’t think you really mean it, Mummy. We must talk about the future. It worries me that you’ve made up your mind to stay here until – well, stay here indefinitely. You don’t want me to interfere, but can’t you see that I can’t help it? You know as well as I do what your doctor thinks. He says that if you leave here and go home you can still enjoy, well, a good chunk of life.’
‘Home?’
Anna felt uncomfortable. ‘We can work something out. I promised Richard I’d try.’
‘When is he back? When is Hilda back?’ Barbara’s voice was plaintive suddenly, like a very old lady who resents the least delay in attention to her wishes.
‘They’re both back next week, I think. They’ll both come and see you when I’ve gone back to London.’
Barbara looked away, ‘I don’t want them to trouble over me.’
Angry, Anna gritted her teeth. Martyrs choose their dying, after all, so should not seek pity in the lion’s teeth, not try to deny the importunate self which led them to their fate. ‘Of course they’ll trouble over you, Mother! How can they do anything else? You talk as if none of us care about you. All right, I know we’ve all been very busy in the last few years. You probably felt left out. But it happens that way. It’ll happen to all of us when our kids have grown up. But it doesn’t stop the children caring, does it? And it doesn’t stop you needing to know that we do bloody well care!’
Barbara said nothing. Anna made an effort, and started again. ‘Look, I’ve been thinking. If I could find you a small furnished flat to rent, near Molly and Harry, would you consider that? We could take it in turns to come down at weekends, and Molly would keep an eye on you.’
‘I couldn’t live with someone else’s furniture,’ Barbara said stiffly.
Determined to be patient, Anna made her voice more soothing still, ‘I can see that. Well, never mind, why don’t I look for an unfurnished place in the middle of Synemouth, and we’ll take your own favourite things out of store. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t make you a nice new home, but without all the effort of buying. What do you think? Please say yes.’
Barbara’s mouth was set in a line, but her lips folded inwards, as if to preserve that countenance. In a small voice she said, ‘I don’t want to live somewhere new. I don’t want to be there alone when I die. I’d rather be here. Why don’t you all understand that? I know what the nurses think, and I know what Dr Jacobs told you. They think that I’m difficult, and that if only I would put my mind to it I could live a reasonable life for another year or two. That’s what they think, don’t they? What nobody tells me is why I should want to. Why should I? What for? I’m tired of it, Anna.’
Anna sat back in the chair, helpless. ‘But why?’ she asked.
Tears gathered in her mother’s eyes, and for a few seconds she said nothing. Anna looked away, her confusion increasing, and sensing that if she were to kneel and bury her head in her mother’s lap, asking for the comfort she herself could not give, Barbara’s hands would not fold about her head.
‘Tell me, darling, do you remember your father?’
‘Of course I do, of course.’
‘I mean really remember him. You can’t remember him in the way I do – children never can. You were all too busy growing up and getting married, all those things.’
‘Whatever do you mean? I loved Daddy. I was devastated when he died.’ How ridiculous it was, thought Anna, that she should justify herself in this way, when Barbara had no inkling of how the thought of William had followed her through each room in ‘Ahoy’; and how sometimes when Tom was asleep Anna wanted to run back through the emptiness, calling out like a child lost in a wood, and to feel the roughness of his tweed jacket against her cheek as he picked her up, loving her as John could never have loved her – certainly not in the damp passion of their bed.
She felt jealous of this old woman who was trying to claim him.
‘Of course you were, Anna dear. I didn’t mean that you weren’t.’ Now it was Barbara’s turn to soothe. ‘But you know, he and I used to sit and talk, when you had all left home, about our future, and that was when he made all his plans about the boat.’ Her voice trembled slightly, then grew firm again, like that of a storyteller who is suddenly moved, despite himself, by his own tale. ‘We used to torment ourselves by talking of the day when one of us had to die, and wonder which of us it would be. You do that, when you really love somebody. You spoil all the happiness of the present by thinking about the sadness of the future. Do you remember doing that, with John?’
Anna flinched. ‘Oh yes, we did. When we were first married we used to say that it was impossible to imagine not being together. He used to say that he hoped that he would die first, because he couldn’t bear the idea of being without me. John was such a romantic,’ she added bitterly.
‘Yes, it is romantic, I suppose,’ Barbara went on in a dreamy voice. ‘The trouble is, when we talk about things like that we don’t have any idea of what it will actually be like. It’s a game; or a play you write for yourself, with a happy ending because deep down you don’t believe in the sad one. Even when he died I couldn’t believe it. I kept thinking that it was a mistake and that I’d see him again. Then I got so angry …’
Abruptly Anna muttered, ‘Yes, I know,’ as if to silence her mother, who still would not stop.
‘… when I realised that I wouldn’t; I felt left behind and I didn’t want to be. It was like being stuck on a moving staircase, endlessly going on up, like one of those in the very deep Tubes – Holborn or Highgate – except that you never reach the daylight. On and on, Anna … can you imagine what that is like? With nobody.’
‘But what about us?’ The question was automatic. Then Anna thought of herself and her brother and sister, and the family Christmases that had tapered out, and felt ashamed that she should now ask her mother to consider them, as if a debt were owed.
‘Yes, Anna, I know you all care about me. But I’ve always dreaded being old and asking someone in the family to look after me. And be waited on – a nuisance. When I was in that geriatric ward I saw what it was like. The families had put the old dears there, because nobody could find room for them, or for whatever reason. All good reasons, I know. The woman in the next bed to me had been looked after by her daughter, but the daughter couldn’t stand it any more – she told me one day while her mother was in the loo. She cried, Anna, because she felt so guilty. I dreaded doing that to all of you. When they told me I had cancer I decided I wouldn’t tell you at all. I just wanted to die as quickly as possible. It’s dignity, you see. Dignity is what all those old ladies wanted as they dribbled and wet the bed and cried in the night and bumped into each other in the corridors, and looked towards the door at visiting time, when nobody came! They knew they’d lost their dignity, and they cried for the shame of it, every night. I used to cry too, only one night I realised that I wasn’t crying for myself, but because of them. For them, I mean – and because I realised that their dignity hadn’t been lost, it had been stolen from them; taken away by their families and by that flock of clockwork dolls called nurses.’
Barbara was pink now, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright. Anna had never heard her speak so passionately, not even after William’s death.
‘I know, Mummy, I know.’
‘But you don’t know, Anna! How can you possibly know?’
‘Please don’t be irritable. I’m trying to understand.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Barbara’s face softened, as she reached across and took Anna’s hand. ‘You have to make allowances for a foolish old woman, getting worked up about nothing she can alter. Sometimes it’s so hard to explain what you mean to other people, because how can they understand? All I’m trying to say is that I thought then that it could be infinitely more dignified to die than to live like that. I would watch the doctors and nurses doing their rounds, and keeping everybody alive as it’s their duty to do, but I wondered then what was the point, and I still wonder it now.’
Her voice was wistful. Anna looked away, catching a glimpse of her father’s photograph and wanting to run from the room. It was as if she had heard all this before, somewhere at the back of her mind, like a warning ignored.
‘Daddy died too soon,’ she whispered.
Barbara’s breathing had quietened. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but why do we say that? I used to say it all the time, as if there were an amount of time we could pay for, like putting money into a parking meter. But – too soon for what? Will it be too soon when I die, or will you be able to console yourself by saying that I had ten years longer than he did?’
‘No,’ Anna said, ‘it always comes too soon. I hate death – I think it’s obscene. Every death is an outrage, to me, and I don’t think we’re ever ready for it.’
Barbara gave a wry smile and shook her head. ‘Oh, but that’s all very well, dear. It’s too fanciful for me, and not always true. Shall I tell you something I’ve never told anyone else? When I buried my own parents – within six months of each other – I felt such relief! All that worrying was over. I didn’t have to explain myself to them any more, and put up with their sense of disappointment that the three of you didn’t always want to be worshipping at the throne of their old age.’
Shocked, Anna asked, ‘Did they really feel that – Grandpa and Grandma? I didn’t think … I’d never have guessed.’
‘Of course, that’s the whole point.’
‘Do you feel disappointed, like that?’
Barbara put her head on one side and looked quizzically at her daughter. ‘Ah, and will you feel relieved, like I did?’
It seemed to Anna that her mother was looking through her skin and bone to the back of her mind, and smiling at what she saw there. Angry tears filled her eyes. ‘Of course not,’ she said through clenched teeth, ‘or would you prefer it if I said yes? You’d feel satisfied then that you’d got a secret from me, and then could let yourself feel knowing and sacrificial if I didn’t come to visit. It’s like a trap. A trap for me.’
Barbara’s face had closed like an oyster shell. ‘Are you in a trap, Anna? You can walk out of here now. I would have thought it was me in the trap. I have to lie here looking at those tree-tops, knowing what I know.’
Spreading her hands in her lap, Anna allowed her right forefinger to trace the indentation on the third finger of the other hand, where the wedding ring she had taken off still left its mark – a pale circle, ghostly relic of the life that John had seen as a trap. She sighed, realising the futility of all their anger with each other.
‘Oh, everybody thinks they’re in a trap, and we’re all imagining that other people are somehow free, or at any rate freer than we are. So we look on those people who are closest to us as gaolers, whether it’s children, wives or parents. It’s all trying to shift the blame, Mummy. Look at me – I’m thirty-five and getting older every day, my cells are falling apart, my skin changing, and that’s the trap I’m in, like any wild animal. Or like you. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just being born that does it.’
‘You sound so sad, Anna. Tell me this, do you ever wish you hadn’t been born? Or that you’d never had Tom?’
She thought hard, then shook her head. ‘No, never. Not even at the worst times. I often think about when we were children, and I like remembering all that. I feel nostalgic, but not sad. That was the happiest time. So I’m glad there was that time.’
Barbara was smiling again. ‘When you’re at the cottage, do you think of all our holidays?’
‘All the time.’
‘We had some marvellous times, didn’t we?’
‘Yes, we did.’
‘I suppose we shouldn’t always be looking back. It uses up your life – if you’re young, like you. It’s all right when you’re old. The past reassures you, though sometimes there’s something you can’t remember, just round a corner in your mind, and it drives you mad, trying to remember it. Sometimes I do a kind of exercise, Anna, and I set myself a task of listing the names of people at our wedding, or the names of Daddy’s important clients, things like that.’
Anna was thinking, only half-listening to this. She had a sudden vision of her father within the oxygen tent, his face grey, his mouth gaping foolishly behind the paraphernalia. Not prepared – not him, nor Barbara, nor any of them; the boat at the boatyard waiting prepared, the firm prepared for the retirement party, the future in ‘Ahoy’ all waiting, and all the little human preparations hollow at the centre, waiting, in innocence and ignorance, for the end. And since William’s fight and failure within the oxygen tent, all those years ago, Anna realised (with that kind of sudden insight that is like a blow) she too had been waiting. She had been preparing for her mother to die too, and dreading it, not because that death would mean that this frail body in the chair beside her would be gone for ever, but because it would sever the last real link with William.
Leaning forward she took her mother’s hand and stared at it, not hearing what she was saying. ‘She loved him. These hands in front of me held him closely when they were young and offered her children to him. They cooked for him, smoothed his bed and ironed his stiff, collarless shirts, and they wrapped his birthday presents, year after year. And older, blue veins sticking out, these hands covered his as they turned the pages of his sailing magazines, and brought him tea on a tray, loving him, indulging him, until the day they closed his eyes for ever, and the hands beat frantically against the wall because it was all gone.’
