September #5
I hadn’t noticed Anna’s hand leave my shoulder until I heard her say, ‘Here, Janey, let me help you. I for one love a spoon of sugar in any hot drink.’ She held out that same hand.
My mother’s eyes moved to her, then back to me, stretched wide.
‘Mum, Anna’s driven down from London. Remember I told you she and Theo were coming to stay for the weekend?’ I could feel myself forming the words carefully in my mouth.
Instead of answering she frowned, her face creasing, the lines of her forehead multiplying to match the number on the back of her hands.
‘Isn’t that nice?’ I tried, a little desperate now.
She ignored Anna’s hand, which was still outstretched, and pushed herself up and off the floor with her palms. Then she lowered her voice as she added, ‘Who did you say she was?’
‘Mum.’ I felt a bubbling inside me. ‘It’s Anna, my friend. You know Anna.’
She looked at her again, then shook her head and said, ‘I’m so sorry, Anna, of course.’
Theo woke up in a grisly mood, but Anna took him straight out into the garden to play and he soon seemed happy.
After a couple of weeks of cooler weather, it was as if summer had returned.
Peggy had said something about it recognising the fact that we were in need of a lift.
Watching them from the kitchen window, I saw Anna lying flat on her back, soaking up the sun’s rays.
Her arms and legs outstretched, sandaled toes pointing out, mouth moving in conversation, eyelids shut and still.
Theo was crawling over and under her bare legs, using them as a climbing frame.
She pushed down her skirt as he accidentally flicked up its hem.
He was wearing a blue T-shirt and a pair of denim dungarees.
I turned to my mother, who was with me in the kitchen. ‘How would you feel about having fish and chips for lunch, Mum?’
‘Oh, I would love some,’ she said, licking her lips. An old favourite.
‘OK, let me go and rally the troops.’
I called out as I approached, hands cupped around my mouth for comic effect : ‘Ohhhh Theo!’
Squeals.
Anna cracked one eye open and then the other. As she came to cross-legged, she smiled at me and said to him : ‘Look, it’s your fairy godmother!’
More squeals, followed by laps around the pair of us, his little legs moving as quickly as they could. His dungarees, previously rolled up, began to unravel and bunch around his ankles.
‘Hi,’ I said, joining her on the ground. ‘Nice patch you got here.’
‘This old thing?’ she asked, tapping at the grass, playing along with my emotional charade. ‘Glad you like it.’
Theo was beginning to look dizzy, his eyes glazed, but he kept on running.
‘What did you give him for breakfast, sugar cubes?’
‘He is particularly hyper after that nap,’ she said, grimacing.
‘Maybe he just loves Norfolk – must take after you.’ While Anna had always thought of the place where we grew up as boring and a bit backward, I still felt the pull of the sea.
She stood up and held out her arms, catching him and lifting him skywards. ‘Got you!’
He giggled to begin with, then he started to squirm. Anna held tight and, after a moment, the smile slipped off his face like melted ice cream off a wafer cone, and he began to whine.
‘Hey, Theo,’ I said, standing up too, ‘shall we go and get some fish and chips?’
He covered his eyes with his hands and started to cry.
I winced as I said, ‘I guess it’s not Norfolk, then.’
Anna laughed, then we struck a deal, or at least she and Theo did : five more minutes of playtime, then we would have lunch. Unfortunately, Theo was in the mood to play dirty. When the five minutes were up, he threw himself on the ground and wailed again.
‘Maybe you two should go ahead,’ said Anna, taking a deep breath and smiling apologetically at my mother as she walked towards us, coat on, handbag in hand. ‘We can catch up.’
‘Are you sure?’
Theo started to pummel the ground, frustrated by the lack of attention his display was garnering.
‘I’m sure.’ She squeezed my hand and whispered : ‘Seriously, save yourself.’
I turned to my mother, but she was making a beeline for Theo.
‘Now, what’s all this?’ she asked, bending forward to get a better look at him.
I don’t know whether it was the different tone of voice, or her shadow looming over him, but Theo quickly hushed and gazed up at her, his eyes glossy and wide.
‘We’re all going to get fish and chips,’ she said, briskly. ‘Are you coming, or shall we leave you behind?’
I stretched my lips wide and whispered an apology to Anna.
She shook her head quickly and smiled.
When I looked back at Theo, he was scrambling to his feet and wiping his eyes.
My mother sat up front with Anna, who asked her polite questions about things like the weather and living close to the beach. I tried to listen to my mother’s responses while also reading from one of Theo’s storybooks to keep him occupied.
The fish and chip shop was a little way up the coast, in a small village that for a long time had managed to slip beneath the radar of the holidaymakers who arrived in swarms every summer.
On dry days, a chalkboard stood outside, bearing some batter-related pun and an aquatic illustration.
A red-and-white awning extended from the whitewashed exterior over two wooden tables, the type with benches attached on either side.
We used to come every other Friday to pick up a treaty dinner when I was a child.
Usually, my mother would stay at home, and my father and I would drive to collect it.
I remember the feeling of the warm plastic bag resting on my lap, and the temptation – rarely resisted – to taste at least one salty chip before we’d made it back.
Anna and Theo grabbed one of those outdoor tables while my mother and I joined the single-person queue behind a man who reminded me of Noah. He looked around the same age and had a similarly thick head of hair and friendly features.
‘Rob?’
He whipped his head around and so did I. Behind us, a pretty woman with big eyes and a nose like a button was sitting at one of a handful of metal tables inside. She was holding a baby and gesturing towards a second child, a little girl of about Theo’s height, who was making a run for it.
‘Gotcha,’ said her dad, picking her up just before she slipped through the door, and rubbing his nose against hers.
I looked away, the picture too bright.
While he placed his order with the skinny boy behind the counter, the little girl peered around and eventually locked eyes with me. When she did, she gave me a toothy grin.
In return, I felt my own cheeks lift.
I’d almost forgotten that my mother was standing by my side until I felt her hand knowingly clasp mine. I looked at her and she smiled with her eyes. She was her old observant self. We stayed holding hands as I ordered three portions of fish and chips, plus one kid-size scampi.
It arrived wrapped in plain white paper streaked with patches of grease.
After helping herself to some mushy peas from a polystyrene pot, my mother spooned a generous helping onto an empty spot beside Theo’s pile of chips.
He looked at her uncertainly, then dipped a little finger into the bright-green mulch. After pulling a face that made both me and Anna laugh, he dipped it in again and again.
Satisfied, my mother nodded and turned her attention back to her own meal.
Despite her awareness in the queue, and the way that she understood, instinctively, how I might be feeling, it was plain to see that she was slowly fading away from me.
I found myself stealing glances at her and Theo throughout lunch, watching the way both seemed to exist in their own world as well as ours, filling their mouths as Anna and I chatted, quietly content.
I wondered how long it would be until he began to take part in our conversations, and equally, how long it would be until she didn’t.
How long it would be until his level of cognitive function surpassed hers.
Though Edna had said that her deterioration so far had been fairly steady, I could sense it quickening.
‘You like Janey, don’t you, sweetie?’ Anna asked Theo.
He smiled and pressed himself against his mum, suddenly shy.
‘What about you, Mum?’ I asked, shaking my head as she offered me a handful of her chips. ‘What do you think of Theo here?’
She kept a straight face as she put the chips in front of me and said, ‘I think he’s wonderful.’ On her jumper was a pea-green stain.
That night, after an afternoon of sand and sea air, Theo soon fell asleep.
My mother seemed tired too and took herself off to read in bed just after nine o’clock.
Anna and I, meanwhile, stayed up talking.
We sat with our glasses of wine on a pair of old deckchairs in the garden until the darkness got too much and the temperature dropped so low that our skin began to resemble gooseflesh.
In the living room, in the dull yellowy light of a couple of lamps with fabric shades, we each took an end of the sofa, facing one another, our backs propped up against cushions and our legs outstretched beneath a woollen blanket.
‘So,’ she said, eventually, ‘how are you, really?’
I wriggled my toes within my socks, and she gently steadied them. ‘I’m struggling a bit,’ I said, reaching for the bottle and pouring some more wine into my glass, then raising the bottle in offering.
‘Please.’
‘It’s a lot,’ I said, topping up the puddle of red at the bottom of her glass.
‘I know it is.’
I returned the bottle to the coffee table, and after we’d both taken a sip, she asked if I’d had much contact with Noah.
‘We talk most days, either over email or on the phone,’ I said. ‘I miss him.’
‘He misses you, too.’
‘You’ve heard from him?’
‘I have.’ When I stayed quiet, she added : ‘He was worried about you and wanted me to check in.’
I rubbed at my chest.
‘He loves you, Cathy – there’s no doubt about that.’
‘And I love him,’ I said, smiling, a sad smile that wobbled before it was finished.
She smiled back, then continued. ‘I know it’s hard, especially with everything going on with Janey, but you’re going to have to make a decision soon, for both your sakes.’
‘I’m working on it.’ It was true, I was working on it, every day.
‘And how’s that going?’
‘It’s going,’ I said, with a half-hearted laugh. ‘In a way, I think the situation here has helped.’
I didn’t elaborate and she didn’t ask me to. All she said was, ‘You’ll tell me if there’s anything I can do to help?’
‘I will, thank you.’ For a moment, we were both quiet, and for a moment, through the quiet, I thought I could hear waves.