Chapter 3
3
K ay drove home in a blur of tears, made worse by the steady rain. Everything was a fog. The whole world was a soupy thick fog, grey outside, grey behind her eyes. Craig had arranged this call a week ago and immediately she had let it slip to the back of her mind. More and more she seemed to do this. With sauerkraut and red cabbage, with odd-shaped walking shoes that were meant to burn twice as many calories and with books that had How to … Why your … Learn the … in the title. Bottom shelf of the fridge, back of the wardrobe, all her good intentions, all the things she found too difficult to face. Tucked away for another time.
Only the dementia team weren’t quite as inanimate as a jar of sauerkraut. So now she had precisely twenty-three minutes to get back, park the car and warn her father that a stranger was going to be ringing and asking a lot of personal questions about his wife of sixty years. More personal than he’d ever dream of asking himself.
At least the gods were on her side. The parking space outside her parents’ house was free. Reversing in, she sat for a moment staring at the back windscreen of the car in front. When things were a little calmer, she would get to the doctor. HRT had worked wonders for Helen… well HRT and an extra marital affair… Still, she had nothing to lose. The constant forgetfulness, the fatigue… Yes, she’d get herself an appointment as soon as possible.
The idea was a pocket of energy. She jumped out, bounded up the drive and opened the porch door, managing to get a hand on the door handle of the inner door before it swung back to reveal Craig, who hissed, ‘ Where have you been! ’ and took her handbag, even though she hadn’t offered it.
‘You were meant to be back half an hour ago!’ he seethed. ‘Your mum’s had her dinner. Haddock and peas. She left the peas. She’s in the living room, with your dad. They’re watching Countdown, well he is. Your mum wants to know why her auntie Shelia is on the telly.’
‘Her auntie Shelia?’
‘Anne Robinson. Have you told your dad? I can stay until quarter over?—’
‘ Craig .’ Kay surrendered, hands up, palms open.
Clutching her handbag at his chest he stopped talking.
‘What time are they ringing?’
‘Six.’
‘Right. We’ve got time.’ And edging past him she made her way along the dark hallway, towards the kitchen.
‘Kay?’ Her father’s voice travelled along behind her.
‘Just popping to the loo,’ she called back. ‘I’ll be right in, Dad.’ Then she stopped in the kitchen doorway, turned back to Craig and waved him towards her.
‘To the loo?’ he stage-whispered.
‘No,’ she stage-whispered back. He never had been the sharpest tool in the box. ‘Kitchen. Now! ’
‘Ah… right.’ And silently Craig followed along to the kitchen, where they stood either side of the table looking at each other.
‘I was thinking—’ Kay began.
‘You haven’t told him, have you?’ Craig put her handbag down, right next to the vinegar.
She looked down. The table was still set from her parents’ dinner. Salt, pepper, Sarson’s vinegar, HP brown sauce, and now her handbag. She reached out and moved the vinegar six inches to the right and then back six inches to the left.
‘I said you should tell him straight away,’ Craig scolded.
She moved the vinegar pot to the right again.
‘ Mrs Patterson! ’
Now she looked up. ‘Would you stop calling me that! I haven’t been your teacher for years. And I’ve been divorced for decades!’
‘I can’t help it!’
‘I couldn’t do it,’ she whimpered and collapsed into the closest chair. ‘I just couldn’t do it.’ Aware of Craig watching her, Kay felt self-conscious. It was funny how this oh-so-young man, with his hard-headed shell and his soft centre, made her feel. He couldn't determine a fraction from a decimal and yet he was emotionally more competent than almost anyone she knew.
For a long moment Craig continued to watch without speaking. Then he pulled his own chair out and sat down opposite. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this,’ he said.
Kay raised her chin to meet his eye. ‘What?’
‘I…’
‘Craig?’ She sat up, a trickle of cold running down her spine. From the look on his face, she knew what he was going to say. ‘Has she hit you again?’
He glanced down at his hands.
‘Craig, has my mother hit you again?’
‘Not me.’
Kay's heart shrank, she actually felt the fibres contract with fear. If not Craig, who else? She knew who.
‘Dad?’
Craig nodded. ‘He has scratches all down his arm. I saw them a couple of days ago. Your mum threw her lunch and some of it landed on your dad’s shirt. I saw, when he was changing.’
‘Oh, Craig.’ Two words that held an infinite weight of sadness.
Craig looked back at her and smiled and the wonder of it, for Kay, was how capable he was of bearing all the sadness his working days must bring him. He was still so young. His face retained the fullness of youth and no one could ever have described him as athletic. In fact, there in her kitchen, with his pale arms and his wispy hair and clean nails, he looked as harmless and inconsequential as a portrait from another century. And perhaps that was the clue. He was light as a watercolour, still a feather in the world. Weightless, untroubled, care-free. He’d yet to reach where she was at. This strange time of life, midway, when she could still remember those fresh-air days of her own, and at the same time understand how few were left. ‘What a topsy-turvy world,’ she murmured. ‘What a topsy-turvy world.’
He frowned.
‘I think you’re the teacher now, Craig. You’re the one speaking sense and I’m like the child… running way.’ She leaned forward, her hands covering her eyes. ‘You’re absolutely right. This cannot go on.’ And she stood up. ‘I’m going to get Dad now.’
He nodded. ‘And I’ll go and start getting your mum ready for bed. Give you some space.’
‘I still don’t understand why it’s necessary,’ her father said for the fourth, or fifth time. She’d lost count.
‘Dad.’ They were sitting side by side at the kitchen table, her mobile phone like a hand grenade between them. From out in the hallway, behind the closed bedroom door, she could hear Craig's voice, talking and cajoling her mother into bed. Kay looked up at the clock. The dementia team were now eight minutes late in calling, which wasn’t a bad thing at all considering how difficult it was proving getting her father to understand the implications, the general direction in which this was all heading.
Sighing, he rose to his feet, picked up the vinegar and the salt and shuffled across to the cupboard. ‘We can manage, Kay,’ he said. ‘We’re managing fine.’
‘Dad.’ Kay turned in her chair. ‘You’re not.’
‘Craig comes in, three times a day. That’s enough.’
Kay dropped her head to her hands. Word for word, this was how the conversation had started ten minutes ago. We’re fine. We have Craig. Twisting around, she watched as her father put the condiments on the workbench and with a shaking arm reached up and opened the cupboard. The salt went in first, then the vinegar. He closed the cupboard and stood with his back to her, looking at it.
‘When I was in Cyprus,’ she said, launching into this pause of a moment, ‘you had a nice week, didn’t you? When Craig took you down to the Rose and Crown. I heard you saw a couple of people you haven’t seen in ages. Alan Watts is still the landlord, isn’t he? Craig said he was delighted to see you.’
‘We did.’ Her father turned. ‘It was pleasant to get out, yes. We should do that more. Your mother and I?—’
‘Dad.’ It was almost a plea. She’d never expected this to be easy; even so, the reality was harder than she’d attempted to imagine. Why couldn’t he see? The last thing she’d wanted was to pressure him into taking this phone call, but now it had become imperative that he did. If she’d been tentative before, she could feel the change within. An incremental hardening of her heart. The sensation turned the corners of her mouth down, but it didn’t stop her saying, ‘You know that’s not possible.’
‘Your mother has the chair?—’
‘And how is Mum going to get into the chair, Dad? And then get from the chair to the car? And then out of the car?’
‘Kay—’
‘ Dad .’
For a long moment they looked at each other.
Kay shook her head. ‘Before I went to Cyprus, when was the last time you left the house?’
‘Well,’ her father said and took a tissue from his trouser pocket, dabbing at his nose.
Kay watched him. She knew the answer, but she was waiting for him to say it.
He didn’t. He dabbed at his nose and shuffled across to the bin.
Dropping her head to look at her hands, she said, ‘It was March. When I took you both out for Mother’s Day lunch, remember?’
‘That’s right.’ Her father nodded. ‘That’s right.’ And again, they looked at each other.
‘Well, that’s enough,’ he said. ‘Every now and then, when you can manage it. That’s enough.’
Her shoulders slumped, she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. March. The daffodils had been out. It had been unseasonably warm and by the time Kay and her father had struggled her mother into her wheelchair, and into the car and out of the car and into the chair, Kay had been soaked with sweat and useless with fatigue. This was how she had spent Mother’s Day. Lifting her mother, feeding her mother, wiping her mouth. Not so dissimilar from when Alex was small. And what for? Not once had her mother been aware of where she was, or who she was with. So, what was it all for? And suddenly she understood that what was enough for her father was too much for her. Far too much. I want some time, she didn’t say. Because a Mothering Sunday bled into an Easter Sunday, which overflowed into Christmases and summers, all lost now. Every one of them. And if there was one thing Cyprus had taught her, it was to turn her face to the sun while she still could, and now she remembered Helen, how she glowed, how alive she was! I want some time, the voice inside her head cried. While there is still time, I want some time!
‘We’ll manage, love. Don’t worry.’ Her father had moved to stand next to her chair. He patted her arm. ‘Tell this girl when she rings that we’ll be happy to look at the respite care.’ And he turned to leave. ‘I’ll go check on your mum.’
Kay snapped her head up. ‘What about your arm, Dad?’ she said, and her voice was louder than she’d intended and nearly all of her wanted to drag the words back and bury them, but they were out now. ‘Your arm,’ she repeated sadly. ‘Craig told me.’
Standing in the doorway, her father sagged, just a little, like dough punched.
‘Craig said that?—’
And whatever she was going to say was cut dead by the sound of her telephone ringing. She looked at it. Unknown number. She reached out and picked it up with an arm that felt as if it didn’t belong to her at all. ‘Dad,’ she pleaded. ‘Please come and sit down. We’re going talk to them.’
Head bowed, her father moved across and sat down.
Kay sighed. She put her phone on speaker and answered it. She didn’t look at her father. She couldn’t bear to see the expression on his face.
‘Hello,’ the voice said. ‘Am I speaking to Kay Burrell?’
'Speaking.’
‘Hello, Kay. My name’s Angie, I’m with the North Herts dementia team.’
‘Thank you,’ Kay managed. ‘Thank you for calling.’
And as Angie talked on, Kay sat listening, imagining a large-boned, well-fleshed woman, halfway through life. A woman, it soon became clear, with a keen humane intelligence that allowed her to rephrase, skip over and generally articulate the most intrusive of questions, and no doubt draw conclusions, so her words rang with the tone of nothing worse than a catch up over a cuppa. She had both Kay and her father if not at ease, certainly not on guard, within minutes, her voice floating between them like a calm and friendly spirit.
What she would be asking, Angie explained, were questions about Kay’s mother’s specific needs. The help she needed to get out of bed, get dressed, eat, take her medications. Is she for example, Angie asked now, able to take care of her own personal hygiene?
Beside her, Kay’s father tapped his nails against the table, his hand bunched and jointed as a spider.
As a working woman in the seventies, her mother had never left the house without her shoes polished and her rayon blouse starched. The smell of her perfume – Avon’s ‘Roses’ – was the pervading scent of Kay’s childhood. ‘No,’ Kay answered quietly. ‘Not really.’
‘Not really?’
‘Not at all.’
At the other end of the line she heard Angie pause. ‘And how is she able to manage toilet visits?’
Kay glanced up. Her father had squeezed his eyes shut.
Ninety-nine per cent of her wanted to stop the world, let them both climb off. What kind of a daughter, she thought, puts her father through this humiliation? ‘She isn’t,’ Kay whispered. ‘Not alone.’
‘Craig comes in three times a day,’ Angie said. ‘Is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘So…’ Angie paused. ‘How are you managing… between times.’
Kay pressed her lips together. ‘Best we can,’ she said and left it at that, understanding that Angie would hear what wasn’t said.
Which she did. Because after that the call began to draw to a close. Angie was promising to get in touch with her parents’ GP. Between social services and the GP, she was telling them, a care plan would begin to be formulated. Another assessment would have to be made, this time in person, but considering all the information she already had from the carer’s reports, she didn’t see any hurdles and she expected the timescale to be reasonably quick.
And then Kay made her mistake. ‘What,’ she asked, ‘does reasonably quick mean?’
‘A couple of weeks,’ Angie replied. ‘There’s no waiting list at Ashdown House. And considering that your mother recently had a week there and is familiar with the place it seems like the sensible choice.’
A couple of weeks. The words resonated through the silent kitchen. Kay looked at her father. But he still had his eyes closed and in that moment all that Kay wanted was to close her own and sit with him and, like a child, wish it all away.