Mum's List

by St. John Greene

  I gazed at Mum’s List for a long time. For the first time, I noticed how Kate had written it in the past tense when she was talking about herself. She knew there was no “if” about it when I asked, “What if you leave me?” If was not a word she used. She knew before I did that it was a question of when she would leave me, not if.

  I took a deep breath, thinking how strong and brave she was. I had a lifetime to care for Reef and Finn, and there was no need to rush through anything on the list. Kate would not want her list to be dashed off as quickly as possible, and that thought was comforting and liberating.

  Another item caught my attention: “Mummy liked walks along the beach and Mendips, rock-pooling and walks in the woods and finding creatures of all kinds.” Priddy was always our favorite spot in the Mendips. It has natural springs, and if you know where to look you can find a huge variety of leeches, toads, frogs, lizards, snakes and newts.

  “We don’t need a rug, the grass is like a rug!” Kate giggled the first time I took her there, when we were courting.

  “Do you know why it’s so smooth?” I asked her.

  “No, tell me.”

  “There are millions of rabbits round here and they’ve nibbled the grass down so it always looks newly mown.”

  She was delighted with that fact.

  “Where’s the best place to look for slowworms?” she asked. “I really love slowworms.”

  Kate was special. I loved that earthy side to her, and it never left her. Years later I ran courses taking groups out on mountain bikes in Priddy. Kate helped me develop interesting routes, always ensuring we avoided areas of precious fauna, to protect the natural habitat. In more recent years we spoiled ourselves from time to time with special picnics there. I’d make saucisson sandwiches with our favorite crusty tiger bread and butter, and we’d take the bottle of champagne from the glove compartment in the car and chill it among the reeds in the spring until it was ice-cold.

  “Who’s driving?” Kate asked the last time.

  “Me,” I replied.

  “Just one glass for you then, Singe.”

  “It’s a deal, but you know what that means?” I replied.

  Kate giggled. It meant she could get tipsy, and I got to take her to bed.

  “Deal,” she said, leaning over to kiss me as passionately as we did decades earlier, when we lay on a blanket having midnight picnics.

  We both loved teaching the boys to explore at Priddy Pools, the perfect spot for kids.

  “Why are we hunting here, there’s nothing to see!” Reef said one time.

  “Come with me,” Kate said, taking his hand. “Let’s lift up this stone and see, shall we?”

  Reef’s little face lit up when he saw the collection of bugs his mummy unearthed.

  “Now you can’t say there’s nothing to see, can you? Shall we look for snakes next? Some of them are poisonous here, but most aren’t. I’ll tell you how to spot the difference . . .”

  Both boys loved Priddy, but, with everything we’d been through recently, I think a whole year had passed without us going there for a picnic. I’d certainly not taken the boys since Kate’s death.

  “Boys, shall we go and have a picnic at Priddy?” I called up the stairs. Finn’s drumming stopped immediately.

  “Yeeeeesssssss!” they both shouted down.

  “Can Kirsty come?” Reef added.

  Kirsty is our babysitter, and she’s also a brilliant mate. She’d been a fantastic help over the past few months, and the boys adored her. She’s only in her twenties and is always a breath of fresh air to have around. Kate adored her too.

  “I’ll ring her,” I said without hesitation, dialing Kirsty’s number.

  “Singe, I’d love to come!” Kirsty said moments later. “Thanks for inviting me. It’ll be great fun. Tell the boys I can’t wait.”

  I loved doing things on the spur of the moment. It’s how Kate and I came to have some of our most memorable picnics, and this one proved to be another great success. I think Kirsty being there helped to no end. Not only was it great for me to have some adult company, but it meant the trip was not a rerun of picnics Kate and I had done together. Kirsty didn’t hunt for slowworms or snakes or four-leaf clovers, and we didn’t eat saucisson on tiger bread. It was just a fun day out, provoked by memories but not ruled by them. The boys ran around in the fresh air, I set them challenges to hunt for bugs and we all just chilled out in the sunshine.

  At one point Kirsty took both boys by the hand and went for a stroll to the spring. I lay back on the rabbit-nibbled grass and closed my eyes. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my eyelids, and I actually felt relaxed for the first time in ages. There were no hospital visits to plan, no funeral details to finalize and no legal or financial documents to fill in.

  As we drove home I thought about the bottle of champagne in my glove compartment. Kate and I always replaced it straightaway whenever we drank a bottle at Priddy, so there was always one waiting for us to share next time. I liked having it there. It was a reminder of how we lived our lives together, how we always looked forward with optimism, ready and waiting to enjoy the next celebration. We kept a bottle there throughout Reef’s treatment. We drank it when his chemo was over, and we did the same when Kate’s treatment ended.

  I realized the next bottle, the one in the glove compartment today, had been to toast to Kate’s brilliant recovery. That’s what I fully expected and imagined, without a shadow of a doubt. Now I had no idea when I would open that bottle, or even who I might share it with, but it absolutely never occurred to me to get rid of it. Kate would have wanted me to keep it there, and I was very pleased to realize I wanted to keep it there too.

  My day with Kirsty and the boys had been such fun, and for the very first time since losing Kate I could actually envisage a day when I might have another woman in my life. I didn’t know who she might be, and I still could not imagine finding another soul mate, but I knew I didn’t want to be on my own. I couldn’t be on my own. I missed the closeness of being in a relationship, feeling another heartbeat next to mine. It wasn’t just a wish or a desire, it was a physical need.

  “Kate set the bar extremely high,” I had repeated to many close friends over the past few months. It was my stock answer whenever anyone alluded to me finding another partner. Ruth and a few of the mums from school did more than allude, of course. In recent weeks some good old friends had started to tell me straight they were going to find me another woman, and some had even started to send me photos on my phone of single friends who were “available.” I laughed them off at first.

  “Let’s have a look at them,” Ruth demanded, when I told her about a couple I’d received recently. We were catching up on gossip as we waited to buy cinema tickets. Ruth had been a star like that, dragging me out to the pictures or for a meal out whenever she could. She knew what it was like to be a single parent. She had done a fantastic job of raising her two teenage boys since her divorce, and I admired her so much. We were already very close when Kate was alive. Now she felt like my sister; nagging me, bossing me, but most of all looking out for me every step of the way.

  I showed her two pictures of attractive women, accompanied by excited little notes in text messages on my phone. “What d’you think, Singe . . . per-fect or what?!!” one said. Another, accompanied by a funny picture of a fair-haired lady pulling a silly face, said: “Lovely lady for you . . . mad as a hatter like you!”

  Ruth studied the pictures and read the texts.

  “You should just meet them for a drink, have a night out and see what happens,” she said. “It’ll be good company for you, even if nothing comes of it.”

  “You’re right, as usual,” I said reluctantly, giving her a big bear hug. “What would I do without you?”

  Thanks to Ruth and the “mums’ army” that had set itself up to rescue
me from singledom, I was slowly starting to come round to the idea that, even if I couldn’t find another Kate, I could still have fun trying.

  It was the week after the Priddy picnic when I finally agreed to have a drink with a newly divorced friend of a friend. Kirsty came over to babysit, and as I tucked the boys up in bed, Reef managed to floor me yet again, this time with his most spectacular blow yet.

  “When are we going to get a new mummy?” he asked very seriously, looking me straight in the eye.

  “I don’t know,” I replied slowly, keeping my face deadpan as I didn’t know what else to do at first.

  Finn looked at me expectantly, raising his eyebrows as if to prompt an answer.

  “OK, you cheeky pair,” I stuttered slightly nervously, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “I’m doing my best, is that good enough for you?”

  They both nodded and smiled.

  “OK, Daddy. You better be quick, though!” Reef said, pulling the duvet over his head and dissolving into giggles.

  Finn joined in with the laughter, and I couldn’t help laughing too. I went out with quite a spring in my step, feeling I now not only had Kate’s blessing to see other women, but the boys’ too.

  As it turned out, when I met my “date” for the evening, it didn’t feel like a date at all. We chatted very amiably about our children, their schools, our jobs and plans for the summer and beyond. I told her I wanted to get even more involved with the boys’ school, and we talked a bit about school governors.

  “Kate wanted me to help out even more at All Saints,” I said without feeling awkward, and she mentioned her ex-husband several times.

  We enjoyed each other’s company, had a couple of laughs and said that, perhaps, we might meet up again some time. Driving home, I felt pleased I’d taken the plunge. She was an entertaining lady and we’d had a pleasant evening, even though I felt it didn’t quite work in terms of us taking things further. I think the feeling was mutual, and that was absolutely fine.

  “Well?” Ruth quizzed me the next day on the phone. “How did it go with the date?”

  “Fine,” I said, meaning it.

  “Just ‘fine’?” Ruth pressed.

  “Yes,” I said. “Fine is good enough for me. I enjoyed myself. Forty-something dating is not quite the same as teenage dating, though, is it?”

  Ruth laughed. “I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there, Singe. Glad you’re giving it a whirl, though. Kate would be pleased.”

  If she’d been standing beside me I would have given Ruth a great big cuddle. She always says the right thing, and says it how it is, and I loved her for it that day.

  “Ruth, you are fan-bloody-tastic,” I said.

  Over the next few weeks I made a decision to put myself forward as Chair of Governors at All Saints. It was a way of being more involved in the boys’ education, as Kate wished, and it’s something I felt she might have done herself if she were here. Even when she was going through chemo she was always volunteering to run stalls, help out on sports day and organize fund-raisers. I wanted to do enough for both of us and more, and the fact I didn’t have to work full-time anymore meant I would have more hours to devote to the school.

  I was already a school governor and had already organized a few “wow” activities for the kids, as I called them. I’d done bushcraft and forest survival courses and I’d arranged an “animal encounters” day, where the kids got to handle scorpions, spiders and bearded dragon lizards brought in by a local expert. I loved it. At one point we let loads of crickets loose all over the floor, which made the kids shriek and jump, and then we let the lizards loose to gobble up the insects. It was fantastic fun, and was also very useful to the school’s growing reputation for innovative teaching.

  I started thinking about what else I had to offer the school, over and above the usual governor duties. Thanks to my boating contacts, I’d been asked several times to accompany The Matthew around Bristol Harbour. It’s a fabulous replica of an old Tudor merchant ship, and I thought how brilliant it would be to get the kids from school on board. I was fired up with excitement and couldn’t wait to tell the boys my idea, but I knew I had to pull it off first.

  I was thinking all this through when Reef ran upstairs into my home office, breathless. What he said took my breath away too.

  “Mummy’s fish and mummy’s prawns are dying,” he announced, tears springing from his eyes.

  My enthusiastic mood evaporated instantly, and I thundered down the stairs with a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. The massive four-foot-long fish tank in our lounge had been a gift for Kate. I brought it home for her two weeks after her diagnosis, knowing her treatment would prevent her from diving, and knowing how much she would miss the sea.

  “Singe, it is just amazing, the best thing ever,” she beamed, her eyes devouring the tropical fish, coral and prawns I’d stocked it with. “You couldn’t have got me anything better. I love you, I love you!”

  “Are you talking to me or the fish?” I joked.

  “Both!” she said. “Look! Look at that one. Can you see it, hiding behind the hermit crab?”

  Kate had a knack of spotting interesting little stunts the fish pulled, and was forever calling me over to come and see. Sometimes it took me ages to work out what I was meant to be looking at.

  “See the coral, well, as it pulses watch that tree worm behind it . . .”

  Kate’s eyes would dance from fish to fish as she tracked their movements excitedly, like a child glued to colorful cartoons. When her treatment stole her energy she often sat in front of the fish tank for hours and hours, munching Coco Pops when she had no appetite for anything else.

  Now I looked at the tank in absolute horror. Every fish was swimming upside down, and the shrimps looked pitifully lifeless.

  “Has the fish tank died, Daddy?” Finn asked sadly.

  “I don’t know,” I said. My throat was tight; I was so upset.

  Finn started crying, and Reef repeated pitifully: “Mummy’s fish and mummy’s prawns are dying.”

  I thought back guiltily over the past few weeks. We had a huge leather coral that had quadrupled in size. I had bought more water for the tank from a local garden center and poured that in, but the tank was overdue a clean. The PH balance must have been wrong, and it was all my fault. I’d neglected it.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, looking at Reef and Finn and seeing, envisaging, Kate standing between them. “We’ll rescue as many as we can.”

  “Mummy would be sad,” Finn said, and Reef started to cry too.

  I couldn’t bear to see the boys so upset, especially at something dying, something belonging to Kate that was dying. It was hideous.

  “Do you know what Mummy wants us to do?” I said.

  “Clean the tank?” Reef replied in true logical style.

  “Yes, she would want that,” I said. “And I will do that and save as many of Mummy’s fish and prawns as possible. But she has also asked me to take you to a real coral reef, so you can go scuba diving and see tropical fish up close in the sea, like she used to.”

  “Is it like a holiday?” Finn asked.

  “Yes, Finn, it is a holiday. I’ve decided I’m going to take you to the Red Sea in Egypt. Mummy asked me to do that.”

  “When can we go?” Reef said, brightening up. I noticed he was holding Finn’s hand now, something he had started to do instinctively, whenever Finn got upset.

  I was thinking on my feet now, but I desperately wanted to cheer the boys up and this felt like exactly the way to do it.

  “How about Christmas?” I said.

  Their eyes widened. “Won’t it be cold at Christmas?” Finn said.

  “Not in Egypt. Lapland was cold because it’s near the North Pole, but Egypt is a lovely hot country with beaches and warm sea to dive in.” Kate
and I had actually taken the boys to Sharm El Sheikh when they were very small, but they were far too young to remember.

  As I discussed the holiday I felt a little tremor tingle through my heart. It was part excitement, part relief. I couldn’t face another freezing-cold Christmas, that’s for sure. I didn’t want to be anywhere near snow, as it would remind me too much of last year, of Kate’s poor lungs having to cope with the icy-cold air in Lapland. I also couldn’t face Christmas at home. We were already halfway through the year, and my grieving wasn’t going to end any time soon. Christmas would be here before we knew it, and it would be too painful to be at home without Kate.

  Getting away, doing something fun in the sun with the boys, that seemed the perfect answer. The idea of going to Egypt had been floating round in my head for ages, because of course it was on Kate’s list, but I hadn’t had a chance to give it a great deal of thought. Now it was going to happen, and it felt right.

  “You have to keep doing well with your swimming lessons,” I told both boys. “You have to be good swimmers to snorkel in the Red Sea. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Reef said.

  Finn nodded obediently, eyes as wide as dinner plates.

  It would be a challenge and a huge responsibility taking them on holiday on my own, especially a snorkeling holiday, but it was one I was definitely up for. I thought again how Kate and I had tried to do the trip three times but had had to cancel because of her treatment. I was so lucky to have a fourth chance, and I was going to make it a holiday to remember.

  “We’d better get plenty of boating practice in too,” I said. “We’ll take the boat out round the harbor tomorrow. That OK, shipmates?”

  The boys nodded. Kate and I lost ourselves when we were on the sea, and I wanted the boys to experience that same sense of freedom. I didn’t want them stuck in the house with the dying fish tank. They needed to be outdoors, blowing the clouds away.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll sort the fish tank out first,” I reassured them. “We’ll see what we can rescue.”