Small Acts of Kindness, page 18
I start to reply. I know precisely what I wish to say, however the word is unwilling. I can feel it there in my brain but when I open my mouth, it refuses to make the journey. But I should say the word. Manners cost nothing, Mother always said. Only the word will not be caught. And so I try a different method.
I hesitate to call it a song since it is from a televised commercial. Ditty would be more accurate. Or should that be jingle? I believe it was for a brand of chocolates. Harriet used to sing it at me sometimes, when a simple thank you would have sufficed.
‘Thank you,’ I sing now – imperfectly, perhaps, but I manage it. I thank Sunny, ‘very much’. In fact there are three ‘very’s. It may not be tuneful, but the message is successfully conveyed.
Sunny is laughing now and not merely the forced friendliness of the ward nurse. One can generally tell. She is shaking her head and saying something about my being priceless. Goodness me, but Roger would be horrified to see me singing television commercials to an overseas heritage nurse person. He would have said that I was making quite the spectacle of myself.
Yet there is something so rewarding about her laughter that I find that I too am laughing. Somehow one can’t help but see the funny side. Harriet would most certainly have done so.
‘One has to laugh,’ she liked to say. Even after all that surgery. Even when the doctors kept delivering more bad news. ‘You have to laugh, Mary. There’s no point crying.’
Sunny moves on towards the next bed with a wink, and a, ‘no, thank you, very much Mary’. In actual fact, I should rather like her to stay for a little longer. She might be interested in knowing about the music therapy class which I shall be attending shortly. A stroke of great fortune, since this is a new initiative for the hospital. Something of an exciting pilot, I understand. I’m rather surprised that Kiki has not yet arrived, in fact. I expected her earlier today.
Perhaps Sunny would also be interested to hear about my peculiar decision. I suspect she would find it quite a shock. I have decided that I shall agree to having my hair coloured pink.
Oh, I know, Roger will be turning in his grave.
‘Mary,’ he would say. ‘You appear to have lost your mind.’ I can picture the expression – like the time I served up Harriet’s vegetarian couscous recipe on a Saturday night. Well, perhaps I have lost my mind. But, Roger, it is only hair. You may not realise that for the last forty-odd years of our marriage, I had it coloured at the salon every two months, with an additional rinse every fortnight.
I haven’t bothered since you’ve been gone, actually. You might say that I have let myself go rather to seed. But, Roger, I am eighty-four years old. I shall not be around to make a spectacle of myself for many years more, so if I have a desire to make an old fool of myself, I shall jolly well do so. And I could tell you another thing, it was really rather delicious, that couscous. Not that you had the manners to even taste it.
I wonder where she has got to, young Kiki. Taken Wordsworth for a long walk before coming in, no doubt. He is rather prone to dawdling. She will be here any minute. My session is in half an hour and she did say she would be here.
She will be terribly excited about my hair. I’m looking forward to seeing her face when I tell her.
KIKI
U
P. UP. UP. THE chain is cold in my fingers. Legs out, stretching back, so that I’m almost lying flat. And then I swing back my legs under me, and lean forward in the seat. Down. Down. Down. And again.
‘How long will you stay on this swing? You know it doesn’t solve a thing?’
Go away, Mother. You’re not even real.
The rain is heavy. My clothes are stuck to me. My face is so wet I’m not even sure if I’m crying anymore.
‘Go and dry yourself inside. You know that only cowards hide?’
I. Am. Not. Talking. To. You.
When I was little, Yaya always knew where to find me after an argument. The playground was by the lake, next to a picnic area. There were the baby swings with bars to stop small children falling out. But the swings I liked best were the tyres on ropes. I would get one swinging as high as it would go, until it was swinging up and back to almost horizontal, and then curl myself up inside it.
Yaya never came straight away. I think she knew I needed to do a lot of swinging before I was ready to talk to her again.
This swing is just a normal wooden one. Just a seat. Not a tyre.
Underneath me is a puddle. When I started on the swing, it was just a patch of wet, but now it is all over the ground underneath me. When I finally get off this thing I’m going to have soaking feet. I should have worn my gumboots. Then I could have jumped right into the puddle like a toddler, splashing everywhere.
Up. Up. Up. Down. Down. Down. Legs out straight, legs back, body up, body flat.
Yaya never tried to force me to come down. She’d just wait, with her arms crossed.
The thing was, when I started swinging on my tyre, I was always so angry. Everything was Yaya’s fault. It was her fault that my classmates never asked me to play with them or go to their houses. The only parties I ever went to were when the entire class were invited. And why did Yaya not take me to libraries or cricket clubs, or buy a television or a computer or let me be a Brownie or have my hair cut by a real hairdresser? Why were my clothes and my shoes always different to everyone else’s? I never knew the TV shows or the bands they talked about. I didn’t understand their jokes.
Yaya gave me the wrong food too. However much I begged for Babybel cheeses, she gave me pulses and rice wrapped in vine leaves. I never knew the games they played. It was all her fault. And nobody understood what she said, not even me half the time. All those years she’d lived in England and New Zealand – how could she not even get the language right?
But when I finally stopped and got out of my tyre and back onto my feet again, the hate was always gone.
Up. Up. Up. Down. Down. Down.
The rain makes everything smell fresh and green. It smells like home.
The chain has a squeak. It sounds like the brakes on the dumper truck, not so loud but the same sort of sound. What do you call it? What does Ned say, in his videos, when he’s sitting there in his cut-off jeans, with his legs tanned and his guitar resting on them? Pitch? The pitch of a braking truck driving towards a scared little dog.
Up. Up. Up. Squeak. Down. Down. Down.
Why am I even here? What did I honestly think was here in England? A brand new life? Instant happiness? Kiki Moon, you didn’t even know that there were two Stratfords. And you promised Mrs M you’d look after her house and her dog.
Poor Wordsworth.
Up. Up. Up. Squeak. Down. Down. Down.
And even then you couldn’t do the right thing. What happened to the ‘I would have been a nurse if my grandmother hadn’t got ill’?
Wordsworth, I’m so sorry.
They say after you die, you can still hear what’s happening around you because your hearing’s the last of your senses to stop working. Sue told me that. I could have talked to Wordsworth about – I don’t know – rabbits in the woods and food in his bowl and digging holes in the garden. I could have told him stories about stealing biscuits and dragging cushions off the sofa or my socks out of my bag and hiding them behind the greenhouse. Maybe I could have sung him a song about going for long walks, instead of running back to the cottage and screaming at Meredith to get out, and then phoning Maxwell and waking him up sobbing down the phone.
Then curling up on the bed in my wet clothes, with my hands over my head. Somebody was downstairs knocking on the door. Maxwell, I reckon, trying to find out what was wrong. Or the police? Is it a crime, to let your dog escape and then gap it when the poor animal gets run over?
Can you go to prison?
I stayed in my bed, with my hands over my head. And that’s when she started up, with her stupid rhymes, like if you don’t go and answer the door, how can you know what they’re knocking for?
Up. Up. Up. Squeak. Down. Down. Down.
Eventually the knocking stopped. But I couldn’t bear it anymore, with my clothes cold and wet, and my phone buzzing and her going on about is this not a little extreme? Sometimes things aren’t as bad as they seem.
I’m so sorry, Wordsworth. I’m so sorry, Mrs M.
Up. Up. Up. Squeak. Down. Down. Down.
Time to leave, leave Little Piddleton. Leave England.
Jump off, into that big puddle. Back to Mrs M’s cottage. I haven’t got much to pack but I should do some tidying. That wine I spilt on the sofa and the ashtray, and there’s a lot of dog hair everywhere and heaps of washing-up. And there are the holes in the garden and the grass needs cutting again. I’ll have to go to the pub too, to pick up my other stuff.
Hopefully Merv won’t be up yet. Or Meredith. I’ll leave a note.
And I’ll send a message to Ned. Not that he’ll care. He won’t even notice I’ve gone. But I want to tell him thanks for listening yesterday.
I’ll go back to New Zealand. I won’t stop in Auckland though. Sue hasn’t replied to a single one of my texts, or emails. She won’t care.
Home, then. No Glastonbury. Meredith won’t believe I’m sacrificing my ticket.
I don’t suppose I’ll ever know who Stan Douglas was or what really happened to my mum. Ironic – just when I thought I was on to something. My mother was a director of Sammy’s Glass Art & Sun-Catchers. What difference does that really make? Really? Even if, by some miracle, the company’s still there and someone still remembers her. Even if they can tell me why my mother was poisoned. She doesn’t magically come back.
And Glastonbury? It meant a lot to my family? But they’re not here. There’s only me.
Maybe I could get that job back in the Lake bar. Now that I know how to pull a good pint. Maybe I could rent a unit in the park, and—
So much easier to run away. Braver to find the strength to stay?
Mother. I am not listening. You’re nothing more than a shimmer of light in the rain.
Then, Kiki Moon, it is your own self you must listen to. You know deep down what you should do.
I can’t stay. If you’d seen that truck and heard Wordsworth howling, you’d know that.
The swing is slowing down. I’ve stopped moving my legs. I’m just sitting, letting it lull itself to a stop.
There are people you have made promises to, don’t they deserve more that this from you?
Mother. Do you never let up?
But, what – I just disappear? All those promises, and I just go? I told Mrs M I’d take her shopping when she’s strong enough. And that we’d to a festival together. And on holiday. She said she didn’t want go to – but I said I reckoned she’d change her mind. I promised we’d tick off everything on the fuck it bucket list. I’ve even bought the hairspray.
And suddenly, what, I’m not here and Wordsworth is gone?
I’d want to know what happened.
I mean, I’d hate me. But I’d want to know.
OK.
So.
Water splashes as I step off the swing.
NED
T
HE BURN OF MUSCLES being pushed beyond their limits. The pelting rhythm in your chest as your lungs and heart strain to propel you further and faster. The banging of blood in your ears and breath in your throat. The salty taste in your mouth. The slapping of feet on the ground and the splash of mud against skin.
It’s still not enough. You force yourself to give more.
Running. Not jogging. No nice gentle run, this is full-out flogging my body to push through the pain, driving myself to be as fast as I can be. Down the hill from Maxwell’s front door to the stream, slipping in mud and finding my balance again in time to hurdle over the water. Landing in long grass and starting up the steep hill on the other side. No time to breathe in those smells of cows and chimney smoke and hedgerow flowers, forcing myself forward. Faster. Stretch further, Ned. Push harder. Arms working in time – just pausing quickly to wipe sweat from my brow, without breaking my stride. Once I reach the top of the hill, I will race to—
‘Very good. Can you feel how we’re working to stimulate those muscles, and to rebuild them gradually? Feel it, yes. Let’s keep this going for another fifteen minutes? How is that for you? Feels OK?’
I want to stay here in these fields, with my legs thumping the ground, carrying me to the crest of the hill. But the fields have gone. I open my eyes. I blink once for ‘Yes’. Head held in place by cushioning, I see legs moving in this wheelchair, feet strapped in to the motorised pedalling machine positioned in front of it, turning without my input. Kneeling by those feet, I see Pom, smiling encouragement. That wasn’t her talking just now, though. That was this new physio, Mikey. He’s standing behind her, watching both of us, muscular arms crossed. Easy smile, broad shoulders, Northern Irish accent. Together he and Pom present the multidisciplinary team. Physical exercise together with communication practice. She has the alphabet board held up ready, inquisitive look on her face. Do I want to say something?
Blink.
‘OK. First row? Second row?’
Blink.
‘E-F-G-’
Blink.
‘G. First row? Second row? Third row? Fourth?’
Blink.
‘O-’
Blink.
‘G. O. Right. First? Second? Third? Four—?’
Blink.
‘Fourth row. O?’
Blink.
‘Wow. You really have the hang of this now, Ned. G-O-O. Is the word Good?’
Blink.
‘Right. First word “Good”.’
Blink.
‘Perfect. Next word. First row. Second row. Third row. Fourth row?’
Blink.
I spell out T-O end word, M-O-V-E without misunderstanding or hesitation. Pom grins.
‘Good to move? I bet.’ That’s Pom talking, but Mikey starts speaking at the same time, ‘Don’t you worry, champ, this is just the beginning.’
And then they look at each other and laugh. And for a second, I feel like I’m laughing with them too. Pom looks back towards me. She smiles.
‘I’m planning to work you far harder than this though,’ Mikey says.
Pom holds up the grid, offering it to me. G I tell them. O. O. D. End word.
The big Irishman takes a step closer to me and puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘So, champ, you know what we need to do now?’
They’re both looking at me. I blink twice.
‘I think we need some goals. Know what I mean?’
Goals? The New York Marathon, perhaps? Kilimanjaro? An appearance on the next Dancing on Ice?
‘We both know you didn’t ask for this. But the way I see it, if you don’t get determined now and set yourself some pretty impossible goals, you’re not going to be pushing yourself as hard as you need to be. See what I’m saying?’
There’s a glance at him from Pom – a slight tensing in her eyes – that makes me think this is not a pep talk NHS physios are trained to be delivering. But he’s gazing at me intently. Blue eyes. Early twenties. Similar age to Pom. He’s a handsome boy. ‘Time to get determined, champ. See?’
He reminds me of someone. Pilates. Passion. Practice. Yes, Mikey, I believe I see.
‘So, what are we saying then? What’s the goal?’ He looks from me down to Pom. She’s waiting too.
R I spell. U. N.
‘Run? That’s the spirit. So, we have a goal now. It is not going to be easy – but by fuck, Norton Edbury, we are not going to give up until we run.’
I blink and blink and Pom gives me her questioning look, grid aloft.
Fifth row. Third letter. W. Second row. First. E. First row. Fifth. End word.
‘We.’
There really needs to be a question mark on this board. And an exclamation mark. And a smiley emoji would be good too.
‘First word “we”. Next word, Ned?’
Blink. Blink.
‘We.’ They glance at each other.
‘Just “we”?’ Pom says. ‘We?’
And then Mikey snorts. ‘Quite right, champ. It’s not “we”, it’s you. I’ll just stand right here and tell you what to do. The hard work’s yours. But I’ll make you a deal. You accomplish that goal and we’ll go on that run together. You and me. I’m not giving you any head starts, mind.’
I’m not sure why he’s laughing now, but I like that he is. Pom too. And then there’s another noise in my ears, like a confused seal. I suppose that must be me.
*
Pom pushes me out into the garden, reeling off one happy adjective after another, ‘encouraging’, ‘great’, ‘fundamental’, ‘important’. She’s so excited about my laugh. Not that it was a laugh. But my something. I saw it in her face – and the way she and Mikey were beaming at each other, like the proud parents of a baby who had just said its first word.
‘. . . exploration of vocal avenues, along with all the ocular-based augmentative and alternative communication techniques we’ve been working with and are looking into. It expands the potential for expression and . . .’
It’s a sunny, still day. The sky is unbroken blue after the night of non-stop rain. Pom has to steer me around a puddly patch on the concrete path.
‘. . . and given how quickly you’ve picked up the basics of the alphabet grid, we can start looking at some more sophisticated strategies of . . .’
It’s nice to be with somebody who cares about their job. I remember that sense of buoyancy when one of my music students at the school really got what I was trying to communicate. A cliché perhaps, but it was satisfying all the same. They sent me such lovely cards and letters. We miss you, Mr Edbury. I wonder who they have covering for me. Although covering is probably not the right word. I don’t suppose I’ll be back soon.
Best not to cling to false hopes.
And yet – feel that sunshine, listen to Pom’s bright chatter. And there’s Maxwell, on the bench there. He hasn’t noticed me yet as he’s looking the other way. He’s talking to an old lady who is a yard or so further on, in my line of sight, holding a rake and pressing some pink flowers – begonias perhaps – into the earth of a tall planter. The occupational therapist with her is called Amir, apparently. I think I recognise him, though I didn’t know his name, but now Pom is calling out, ‘Hey, Amir. Hello, Mrs Malley. How was music therapy?’
