Chapter 15
15
‘H ere? Are you sure?’
‘Here is fine.’
Kay looked around. The park bench which her father had directed them to faced east, up toward a small green hillock framed by beech trees.
‘It’s not much of a view, Dad.’
It wasn’t. Behind the hillock rose the brick rectangles of a retail estate. B hundreds, probably thousands of women trying to live up to unrealistic ideals that had been dropped into their laps. Dropped? Or willingly received? Who’d asked her to take on the full-time care of her parents? They certainly hadn’t.
‘And I’ll tell you something else.’ Craig said. ‘I’ve never once heard anyone’s son talking the way you are now. It’s always the women who are willing to give everything up.’
She turned to him. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Oh. Well, I’m not sure I’d say willing to give?—’
’No,’ he interrupted, ‘neither would I. Obliged then?’
‘Obliged… yes.’ Kay nodded as she looked at him. At sixteen he still hadn’t known his times tables, but he had the emotional intelligence of Ghandi.
‘Mrs B?’
‘Craig?’
‘Mothers don’t want their grown sons checking under their boobs for sores. And men don't want their daughters washing their penises and rinsing their catheters.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not the same as changing a toddler’s nappy. You said you wanted to look after her the way she looked after you? But it’s not the same. Will you take my professional advice on this?’
‘I’m trying to,’ she whispered. And as she breathed in, her chest felt painfully tight. Everything she was being told was both uncomfortable and true. Helping to change and wash her mother had been awful for them both, and the one blessing of the fact that her mother didn’t recognise her any more was that as far as she was concerned, it was now a stranger that wiped a flannel between her pale and spindly legs. Which didn’t, of course, ease Kay’s own discomfiture. And as for her father, how could she care for him, like that? When and if the time came? The thought warmed her with embarrassment and shame and guilt. An overwhelming, impassable minefield of emotion. She turned to Craig. ‘I’m really trying to.’
‘Good.’ Craig folded his arms, nodding as he shifted his weight. ‘Because there’s more to this job than people think. Much more. We don’t just wipe arses and slap ready meals in the microwave, you know.’
‘I know. I?—’
‘No… you don’t.’ A shy smile spread across his face. ‘Sorry, Mrs B, but you know as much about this as I know about fractions! Ever sat all night with someone who’s too scared to sleep in case they never wake up again?’
The warmth of emotion that she had been feeling drained away. Never wake up again? Suddenly, under the August sun, Kay was cold. She shook her head.
‘Or cleaned shit off wallpaper?’ Craig continued.
’No,’ she whispered.
‘Or spent half a day reminding someone every three minutes that there are no car keys, cos they don’t have a licence any more, let alone a bleeding car? And I do mean every three minutes , all afternoon.’
‘Craig—’
He raised his hand to cut her off. ‘We stay awake when they can’t sleep, and we comfort them when they wake up. We sit with them on the floor, to wait for the ambulance. We manage tantrums and fire hazards and all kinds of abuse and we still treat them with the respect they deserve.’
‘I know?—’
Again he cut her off. ‘And I can do that, Mrs B. I can do that, because it’s my job. I get to go home, stick a pizza in the oven and open a bottle of wine. People caring for elderly relatives in their home can’t do that. It’s full time. So – all respect and everything, cos you were my teacher…’
‘I was.’
‘But you don’t know.’
She didn’t answer. She lifted her chin and looked across at the mother and the pushchair. Now it had been turned she could see the baby. Another mouth to feed, bottom to wash. ‘How much do they pay you?’ she asked.
‘Not enough.’
‘Well…’
‘It doesn’t matter how much. I love this work. You know I wasn’t any good at school, but now I’ve found something that I love and… Well, what I’ve seen… I could write a book.’ And he stopped talking and looked down at his hands.
Across the park, the mother kicked the brake of the pushchair free and called across to her little girl. Time to go home.
Kay watched them leave. Home. For tea and bath and story and bed. Those days, those halcyon days that encompassed a child’s every need and wish and desire, and that ended so perfectly with tea and bath and story and bed. Slowly she turned to Craig. ‘Let’s get back. It’s time.’
They walked back slowly and silently, and as they walked Kay thought of the daisy shorts the little girl was wearing. Alex, she was remembering, had had similar shorts. Train patches on the pockets. Red trains, blue track. As they turned the corner of the pathway, past the last burst of salvia, the back of B&Q rose into sight. Where were Alex’s shorts now? On another little boy? Or rotting in landfill? She looked up. There were her parents, sat in exactly the same position as she had left them. ‘This is the price we pay,’ she murmured.
Craig looked at her.
‘For love,’ she said. ‘Everyone grows up and leaves, and everyone grows old and dies, and this,’ she said, ‘is the price we pay for loving them.’