by Morag Joss
“Oh, I’m sure I can manage,” I said, intending to put a stop to it all and be rid of him; he was taking a friendly conversation too far. “I’ve been managing for many years. And my son helps, when he’s here.”
“Are you sure? Well, I’ll leave you the eleven quid, anyway.” He stood up. “If you do want me to just go.”
That was when, without pausing to think about it any more, I told him I didn’t want him to just go. I was still in the clothes I had slept in. I wanted him to help Howard give his face a quick wipe (since he’d done so well helping him with breakfast) and keep an eye on him while I got myself bathed and dressed and ready for the day, and then I wanted him to take us up on the moor for our son’s birthday picnic. We went every year, I told him, even the years Adam couldn’t be here. Lately, since Howard’s stroke, I would even go alone, just to sit. But Adam had been so looking forward to it this year, I said. He’d been desperate to get back for his birthday. He’d be thrilled to know we made it on to the moor and had the picnic, even though he couldn’t be here himself.
Howard awoke to the feel of hands cupping his cheeks from behind, large hands that were cool, and rough. It registered with him that they were Deborah’s hands—who else’s?—although maybe today they smelled a little different: newly washed, giving off a whiff of something from a bottle, grassy with a hint of tar. A voice, which also could only be Deborah’s—although there was something different about it, too—said something he didn’t catch, and then his head was tipped back and a wet cloth came down over his eyes. He tried to claw it away but the hands were heavy and quick as well; in one movement they seized and covered his own, and lowered them to his lap. The cloth was replaced over his face. Howard tried to shriek but no sound came, and for a while nothing else happened. The voice spoke again; again he could make no sense of the words, and he couldn’t see anything through the cloth. But from the echoey drop of the voice into silence and the watery smell he knew he was still in the linoleum-floored kitchen, where he half-remembered he’d been having breakfast not very long ago. Usually he was moved right after breakfast. He tried to lunge out of his chair but was forced back. The cloth slid off his eyes and around his cheeks and was gone. Howard blinked and strained his eyes for a glimpse of Deborah coming to him with a towel to dry his damp face, but at the corner of his eye he caught only a movement, a stirring of air following someone’s departure from his line of vision. He was alone, in silence.
Silence—that was it. He wasn’t in the sitting room watching television, as he ought to be. He shivered. No wonder he’d fallen asleep—he’d been left in the kitchen, where there was nothing to watch. He rummaged at the sides of his chair as if he’d find the remote control there, but of course he wouldn’t, he knew that was stupid, it was all wrong. Things were going wrong. He tried to call out and this time from his mouth there came a shriek, and with an explosion of spittle he almost managed the word Deborah!
The voice, out of nowhere, spoke close to his ear.
“It’s all right, Howard. Quiet, now. Guess what, we’re going for the picnic. All of us. That’ll be fun, won’t it, Howard?”
I was always quick in taking my bath because the bathroom was drafty and the tap ran so slow the water would be tepid before there were more than a few inches of it. There was never any possibility of soaking in deep warmth, not for someone my size, so I sat up straight like a fleshy, rounded inversion of an iceberg, nine-tenths above the surface. Anyway, I knew if I tried to lean back, the cast iron slope of the bath would feel uneven and I would begin to hurt, as if there were an extra, tender little spur of bone sprouting under my left shoulder blade, which, for all I knew, there was. So I sat with my knees drawn up as I always did, and washed my body up and down, clasping myself in long, slippery hugs and pushing into my folds of flesh with a nugget of soap in each hand, while the water ran in trickles down my back and cooled around my haunches. Even so, I liked the novelty of a morning bath—I usually bathed at night, after Howard was in bed—and even though it wasn’t very comfortable I thought of it as a treat, as if the day were my birthday. Then I put on my dress of dark blue and white checks that I used to love but hadn’t worn since Adam was last here and told me it looked like a tablecloth. It was years since I’d used perfume but I put some on anyway even though it had gone syrupy in the bottom of the bottle and smelled like sherry.
When I came down Howard was still in the kitchen and had retreated into a doze. There was no sign of Theo and his absence hit me hard, until I realized that he must be in the scullery, emptying the washing machine. I left him to it. It was strangely enjoyable and relaxing, the thought of someone out of sight but somewhere in the house, helping to get ordinary things done. I had decided in the bath that the less chance I gave Howard to make a fuss about Theo being here the better, so I told him about the picnic but didn’t mention Theo directly. If I assumed that Theo’s presence was going to be fine with him, then surely it would be. In fact it must be already, or he wouldn’t have been sitting so extra quiet and docile.
I took the carving knife to the cold pork and made big sandwiches with thick slices of meat and bread swabbed with warm butter. I wrapped the birthday cake in some old newspaper, filled two thermoses with tea, and slung everything in the basket that hooked on the back of the wheelchair. I brought the wheelchair from the hall, unfolded it, and parked it in the yard, just over the threshold. Howard came obediently enough. He was tremulous and unsure, but at least he didn’t try to ask silly questions. The main thing was that there was no struggle in him. I didn’t know if he understood entirely what was happening, and I didn’t altogether mind if he didn’t; the outing never had been for his sake, and now it no longer felt as if it was for Adam’s. It was for mine. Just by remaining here to carry out my wishes, Theo made it so. Beyond that, he was making a gift of the event to me, bestowing upon it a worth it would never possess had I simply claimed it for myself. I tucked Howard’s legs in safely under a blanket, and we set off. The weather looked uncertain.
Howard’s bulk, the weight of the picnic, and the uneven ground made the going very heavy. But before we’d cleared the yard Theo was pushing alongside me, saying nothing but taking most of the load; the new ease I felt in my arms and shoulders made me smile over Howard’s head. I was carrying the walking frame lightly hooked on one arm because the wheelchair would be useless once we’d gone through the gate into the first field. If we made it across the field, following the hedgebank on the far side, Howard might be able to get over the stile into the next field. With Theo to help, I was confident we would. Farther than that, we’d have to see.
It was rough going on the track. Howard shrank himself up small and yowled going over the bumps, but then Howard always did complain about doing anything at anyone else’s speed. I signaled over his head to Theo to ignore him and keep going. It was important to keep going. Everybody at Stroke Club said Howard must be encouraged to move and do things for himself and get out as much as possible. Immobility therefore depression, depression therefore immobility, they warned, without explaining how we were supposed to stave off or withstand either one. Well! Here we were managing to do both, and all thanks to Theo. With him beside me, we set a rattling pace along the track, quite drowning out Howard’s whimpers and yelps. Now and then I got tired of pushing and we paused for a short rest, and then I would wander away out of earshot of Howard’s complaints on to the verges and pick flowering weeds that wilted at once in my hands. Soon I got to thinking how pointless it was to pick them because back at the house they never lasted in water anyway, so I stripped off the leaves and flower heads and dropped them, and carried on up the track clutching the bare stems and then chucking them away, too. I didn’t know why I’d picked them in the first place or why I was so profligate with them. It might have been simply that in the company of this new person, Theo, I could try out the idea of myself as fickle and faintly irresponsible; maybe I could be one of those careless women who idly pick flowers and lose interest in
them and throw them away.
At the end of the track Theo set down the brake of the wheelchair, pulled off Howard’s blanket, and helped him to stand up and grip the walking frame. I opened the gate into the field. Howard shuffled forward, staring at the ground. Behind his back, Theo and I smiled, and then I remembered suddenly that I hadn’t brought my camera so I wouldn’t be able to take pictures from the moor to show Adam. I thought about running back for it but instead I waited, and once Howard and Theo were through the gate, I followed and closed it behind us. This was not really Adam’s picnic, after all.
Less then half-way up the field, Howard planted the walking frame in the ground, slumped over it, and wouldn’t budge. It had taken us nearly half an hour to go fifty yards and now he was sweating and moaning, and if he hadn’t already wet himself, he probably needed to pee. I should have thought of that. Also, although the wind was always blowing up here the sun was hot, and I should have thought to bring his hat and sun cream. One way and another I was being unforgivably careless. The field we were stuck in was thistly and dirty with cowpats and there wasn’t a view—in fact, we were no distance from the house. The thought that this was as far as we would get filled me with despair and rage. I wanted to scream at Howard for just standing there as if rooted, his nose turning pink in the sun, his bare head glistening. I looked around for Theo, feeling suddenly deserted; this promise of release from the house held out, only to be snatched back—I did not know how I would bear it. He’d vanished. But just as I was about to call to him and cry out that we would have to go back, he loomed into view from the direction of the hedgebank beyond; he must have gone on ahead, perhaps scouting out the least boggy route for us up on to the moor.
I watched him glide toward Howard, and I swear that, even through the trembling haze of wind and heat across the field, what I then saw happen was incredible. Theo turned the frame away from Howard and dipped forward, shoved his head under Howard’s arm and hoisted him over his shoulder. Howard’s body bent in the middle like an understuffed toy, arms dangling, legs flopping disjointedly. I held my breath and watched, aghast and unbelieving. Theo staggered under the weight and bulk; his knees locked and then wobbled, and locked again, he struggled for balance, stamping one foot and then the other down hard on the uneven clumps of grass. Howard shrieked in terror and I cried out to Theo to put him down. They were both going to crash to the ground, and only Howard’s bones would break. But Theo steadied himself like a weightlifter, took a wide sideways step. His eyes were bulging, spit sprayed out from between his bared teeth. His feet snatched at one spot, then another, then he managed to plant one foot in front, and he started to tread uphill, pausing every few steps. I followed.
Eventually, with a great bellowing sigh, he set Howard down on the step of the next stile and bent over double, panting and blowing out his cheeks. By the time I reached them, there was Howard standing at his frame (I suppose Theo had carried that, too, somehow) as if he’d never really budged, laughing breathlessly. Theo was delighted because Howard seemed to be enjoying himself. I didn’t like to tell him about Howard’s crying and laughing fits which were like involuntary spasms, just muscular upheavals caused by his misfiring brain that might not have anything to do with his feelings at all. So I made a show of delight and laughed, too, and told Howard he was doing fine.
After a long rest, Theo lifted the basket and walking frame over the stile. Then he stood on the first step, and between us, pulling and pushing, we got Howard up and standing on the stile, hanging on for dear life to the top bar of the fence. Theo stepped over, and I stepped up behind Howard and held on to him. Theo coaxed his good leg over the stile and took his weight while I bundled the bad leg across. Howard’s eyes were closed and his jaws were working fearfully, and he was almost a dead weight, but he didn’t panic or resist. I don’t know how it happened, but then Theo, holding Howard under the arms, toppled backward off the stile, taking Howard down with him. Howard landed heavily and was winded. His legs were scraped and bloodied, but we were over. Once he was hauled back on his feet he locked the fingers of his good hand on to his frame and clung on, bent and trembling. The ground was soft, I pointed out, so no bones were broken, he was fine; there was nothing to worry about.
Anyway, Howard had to be fine, because we could not go back now. I was too elated. The wind was pulling up from the ground where he’d fallen the raw smell of broken grass, and letting loose all kinds of sounds that went tumbling over the hillside: the bleating of sheep and lapwing cries, and from deep in the combe at the far edge of the field, the hissing of leaves in the alders. We cut a diagonal path, making for the remains of a gap between a stone dyke and some bigger beech trees. There was a channel of water to cross in the middle of the field, no more than three inches deep, but Howard looked alarmed. Theo took him on his shoulders again, and under his weight his feet sank deep into the streambed and turned the glassy surface of the water into chaotic swirls of mud and grit. I took off my shoes and waded across. The water was so cold and the shale so stinging underfoot that for a moment I felt sick, and then I wanted to pee so badly I was afraid I would wet myself. This feeling almost, but not quite, wrecked my elation, until I decided it was almost funny, really, for such an accident would only happen because I was overweight and getting older, but in fact the sudden panic and shame at even the possibility of it was making me feel very young, reminding me of the way children keep hidden from the grown-ups all those secret, trivial little scandals that feature themselves and nobody else. When I’d got my shoes back on I stopped for a rest, and to watch. Theo’s grace was quite unreal; in the distance he moved as if born of the wind or the sky. With his hand pressed into Howard’s back, he was making him take minute steps forward. But Howard was about to give up. The ground was uneven and the walking frame listed and began to sink, and Howard uttered a cry that turned into a fit of coughing. Theo moved fast, and hoisted him once more over his shoulder. I followed, picking up the walking frame on the way.
After an hour and a half we had crossed three fields. Neither Howard nor Theo could go another step, so we settled ourselves a few yards from a line of alders sprouting from a broken hedgebank, some way under the crest of the rise. Along the ground a blue plastic hose snaked down from the moor around the tree roots and fed into an old metal bath that overflowed at one end; all around it the mud was choppy with hoof tracks where the sheep came to drink. At first Howard was unhappy about sitting on the rug but we helped him down and after a moment he looked comfortable enough, lying flat on his back. I sat with Theo on the edge of the rug to look at the view; behind us, Howard went quiet. He might have been thinking about Adam’s birthday, but most likely he wasn’t.
We were within sight of the ridge of the moor. A way over it, on the far side, was where I’d found the dying sheep that day. I hadn’t been up here since. I considered, and dismissed the idea of telling Theo about it, and about the floating figure I’d seen through the rain clouds, treading the air yet staying distant. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know how to describe that day, or perhaps was afraid to, it was that today was so different. The horizon was clear and the only clouds were high-up, wavy veils across the blue; sunlight glinted on the other side of the moor that sloped away from the ridge. The harvest was almost in, and for miles around, the acres of arable land claimed from the wild furze and made fertile were buzz-cut into thick, fawn-colored stripes. A combine was flailing across one faraway, vanishing yellow square of field and raising a cloud of wheat dust, and a tractor pulling a load of grain trundled through the lower pastures that rolled down to the barns. A languid pair of buzzards floated in stiff-winged circles over the stubble.
I could tell that Theo had turned to look at me, but I went on gazing out across the moor and pulling at the little tufts of grass under my hands, which tore with a soft creaking sound. A banal remark about the wild ponies and deer and how we were almost certain to see them today was on my lips when I heard Theo ask me abruptly if I liked coming up here.
I glanced behind me. Howard had managed to turn on his side and I couldn’t see his face.
“Of course I do! It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The moor’s so beautiful!” I said.
“You don’t have to like a place just because it’s beautiful,” Theo said.
I thought about that for a while. “But it is beautiful. And it’s important to me,” I said. “Don’t you have any place that’s important to you?”
There was no answer. “Where have you come from, Theo?” I said. “The place you’re from—is it important to you?”
He waved the questions away. “Some places I like, some I don’t. Why do you have to come up here? Just because it’s your son’s birthday?”
I got up and attended to Howard, who was asleep with his mouth open. His head looked so small now his hair was shorn, and the gusting wind was teasing the remaining strands, exposing his bumpy yellow scalp. He looked cold, a little blue around the mouth and nose, and his hands were blotchy. Poor Howard, he could have been asleep in snow. I took off my cardigan and placed it over him.
When I sat down again I told Theo that in the early days we loved coming up here, Howard and me. On afternoons like this I would bring a rug and flask of tea in a sling strapped to my back and Howard would carry his shepherd’s crook. I’d pour Howard’s tea into a cup and sip mine from the lid of the flask. He’d sit whittling sticks with a penknife and talking about everything to do with Stoneyridge, the reasons we were here, how it would all come right. He had it all worked out. Such wonderful summer skies, at the beginning. I had thought of painting the sky, or putting the color of it into my weaving. I never managed to do either, not after I had Adam.
