by Morag Joss
So I haven’t shown the photographs of Adam, or the album, to Theo yet. Anyway, it’s an evening activity, looking over old pictures, and evenings are when he tends to take himself off, leaving me with Howard in the sitting room or, after Howard is in bed, alone there with the television volume turned down. Out of habit, I’ll sit in front of the screen for another couple of senseless hours with the feeling of waiting for something better to happen, or just for enough time to pass until a normal person’s bedtime comes around. Now I wait for Theo, and am disappointed, because he doesn’t come into Howard’s sitting room in the evenings.
However, out here digging over the emptied vegetable garden as the afternoon light fades, I’m quite content, because most of the time I no longer feel alone. In fact, I feel very much less alone than I do when I’m with Howard. A few hours spent out here is not loneliness anymore but just a measurable interval between spells of Theo’s company. As I strip beans off the wigwam of canes, I am storing up things to say to him over a cup of tea. When I left him in the kitchen I think he was just about to fill a basin with warm water, so by the time I get back he’ll be finished with Howard’s shave. (I would be so relieved if shaving Howard were to become one of Theo’s regular jobs.) I heave the basket of pocked and blighted vegetables on to my hip and set off with it to the house. Theo rather than Howard might be at the window, and I compose my face so that as I enter the yard I am wearing an expression that nobody could possibly describe as lonely.
I swing the basket off my hip as I come in. I feel Theo take the weight of it from me and set it down, and then the kettle goes on. I tiptoe into the sitting room, just far enough to see that Howard, his face red and shining, is slumped sideways in his chair with his eyes half-closed. Light from the television screen flickers over his face. I don’t disturb him. He doesn’t look well, but that’s because this room is always dark. By September, as the day wears on it takes on an even worse, dull, orangey pall from the hessian-shaded lamps. In fact I very much dislike the evenings here, though I’ve never said so. I return to the kitchen table and suggest to Theo that we might start lighting the stove in the front sitting room in the evenings, after Howard is in bed. I don’t say that for me the foremost pleasure in this would be that Theo might stay up a little longer and sit with me. I’m delighted when his face lights up and he says he’ll bring in some logs straightaway.
From: deborahstoneyridge@yahoo.com
To:
Sent on wed 7 sept 2011 at 11.12 GMT
Hello Adam – things been a bit hectic, I’m a bit disorganized at home as Dad came down with quite a bad cold that went to his chest. I think he’s on the mend but we skipped shopping and stroke club last week. Anyway I wasn’t sure when you were back from Barcelona so I wasn’t sure if you’d get an email. Still plenty in garden and anyway Dad isn’t eating much.
Nothing else to report and there’s someone waiting to get on here (as usual!) so will sign off now. Take care, lots of love
PS – I must be going nuts! The big news is D and I went up on the moor on your birthday anyway. We had a great time. Sandwiches, cake, everything! Sun was out though it was windy. D enjoyed being out even though it was hard going, especially coming back – sudden rain shower, it came down in sheets, typical Exmoor weather!
PPS – You should have been there!!!
Noises from outside woke Howard, and brought him to the kitchen window. Although his legs were still sore from the day on the moor (how long ago had that been?), he almost enjoyed the effort required of them to move him across the sitting room, through the door, and into the kitchen. Without his frame, walking was laborious and demanded his full concentration, but before he reached the window he realized that it was years since he’d been curious enough about anything to get up on his feet and move.
Crashing and splitting and tearing sounds were coming from across the yard, from the old pottery workshop, whose long, bulging brick wall he could see only because he knew it was there. What was she doing, in his workshop? As he peered, an object came flying through the open door and skeetered to a stop on the yard cobbles. Another followed it, and another. The sounds of breaking went on and more bits of wood came flying through the air. A loose, zigzag pile of sticks was accumulating in the yard. Howard tapped weakly on the window and tried to shout out, but the agitated string of swear words that was in his mind got tangled in his mouth and came out as a spitting, angry screech. He lurched to the door but couldn’t get it open; hauling at it with a shaking hand, he overbalanced and nearly fell. He had to get outside, but to do that he needed his walking frame. He turned, as fast as he could, and staggered back to the sitting room. By the time he’d got his frame and come back to the window, Deborah was in the yard. He watched her fill the wheelbarrow and trundle it calmly up to the door. She opened it and came in.
“You’re up and about, are you?” she said, stepping past him.
With his good hand he managed to take hold of the edge of the door before she closed it, and to make a sound that directed her attention to the barrow outside.
“What? That? I need some kindling, that’s all. There’s no decent dry wood around here,” she said. Howard wanted to ask what the hell she thought she was doing. He did his best with a sentence about destroying furniture, about his workshop, but wasn’t sure if he got it across. She stared at him.
“Those rickety old things, the old workshop stools? Is that what’s bothering you?”
Tears began to run from his eyes. He nodded, and tried to wipe them away.
“Don’t be silly, Howard, they haven’t been used for years. Not since the last pottery weekend, remember? They were falling to bits, like everything else in there, the place is full of junk. Come on, let’s get you back in your chair,” she said, taking him by the arm. Her voice softened a little. “They’re no use to you now, are they? And I do want some kindling.”
Howard allowed himself to be led back to the sitting room. She switched on the television for him and placed the remote control in his hands. Over the thudding soundtrack and screaming tires of a car chase, he thought he heard her say, as she left the room, “Anyway, it wasn’t my idea, it was Theo’s.”
To: deborahstoneyridge@yahoo.com
Sent on thurs 8 sept 2011 at 08.23 EST
Nothing in post from you! Tried to get you on phone, no answer and there was no answerphone yesterday afternoon – were you off on an outing somewhere? If you go out, remember to switch it on!!! Hope you had a good time wherever you went.
So does that mean Dad’s ok in the van now or does it still make him feel sick? How is he, how’s his cold? Hope it hasn’t gone to bronchitis, it did that once, remember. You haven’t got it as well, have you? Tough call, looking after him if you’ve got it too. There’s something going round here as well, a stomach thing. I’m OK so far touch wood, only with loads of people off I’m here till after eleven at night then if I’m lucky I get about six hours sleep and am back in for 7 am! Nightmare, plus I know for a fact at least three of those people are skiving. Sacha my boss has got it and feels terrible (looks terrible too but I don’t say that!!) but she struggles in and keeps going, there’s not many like her.
Mum have you put my mobile number into yr phone yet – 04779 690323. Remember I showed you how to do it – then you only need to press 1 and the phone will dial my number automatically. So CALL ME if you need to. Will try and get you on Sunday again though I’ll probably have to go in to the office for at least a half day to catch up on stuff.
Can’t believe you went up on the moor! How the hell did Dad make it or did you have to carry him?! It’s amazing he got that far and back. To be honest I don’t really see the point of all that effort just to go up there but whatever makes you happy I suppose! …
Mum it would have been great to see you last month. sorry again. I really wish I could have made it. Say hi
to dad, lots of love Adam xx
PS when will you get this, I suppose on Wednesday? When you do ring me and I’ll ring you straight back ok?
From: deborahstoneyridge@yahoo.com
To:
Sent on wed 14 sept 2011 at 11.12 GMT
Dear Adam, sorry I missed talking to you when you rang and sorry I didn’t write last week – can’t remember where we were last wed, don’t think we were out – I will check phone and make sure it’s working ok. No need to worry.
I hope you haven’t gone down with the bug! Hope everyone’s better now and back at work and giving you a bit of a break. Poor Sacha, she does sound hardworking. Like you!
Probably I missed your calls because I was outside, I’m getting on with some jobs now. I’ve got a bit more energy from somewhere these days! Eg the pottery studio’s a disgrace, am burning a lot of the old junk and it’s nice to use the sitting room stove again, it’s ages since we did that and I like to have a proper fire. Makes a change of scene for me in the evenings. I think it’s taking the chill off the front of the house as well, fingers crossed it might even keep the damp at bay this winter.
Nothing more to tell, really – business as usual. Talk soon. Take care, don’t let them overwork you! Lots of love, Mum xx
PS – sorry! Posting your birthday card asap!
It’s too late for Howard’s silly objections. The old pottery stools are now a heap of sticks so we may as well get some use out of them. So in comes the kindling, in barrowloads wheeled through the kitchen, down the hall, and into the sitting room at the front. While this is being done, and Howard sulks in front of the television, Theo makes a suggestion that is a little presumptuous and comes out of nowhere. He says now there’s a bit more space in the old workshop he could set up some drying lines. He ought to do a proper clear-out in there, get the lines up, and then the washing would get dried even when it rains. And it rains an awful lot, he notes, and it’s not as if anybody wants to make pots in there anymore. I see his point and I’m touched he’s remembered what I told him that first day about wet washing. It was Adam’s birthday, and with a shock I recall I still haven’t posted him his birthday present! But he wouldn’t wear a thick jumper where he is anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. On the matter in hand, I don’t suppose Howard will like the studio being given over to the drying of washing, but I’ve struggled long enough with no proper place to do it. I expect he’ll come round, but even if he doesn’t, there’s nothing he can do about it.
Meanwhile, the stack of kindling looks nice stored by the fireplace, next to the place for the logs, as if this is a well-run and well-provisioned house.
Even so, I have to wait a little longer for my fires in the evenings. The logs piled at the side of the yard have been there for years, waiting for Howard’s next kiln firing, which never came and never will. They are saturated and mossy and it’s more than a week after they are stacked indoors before they will catch fire at all, and another before they burn evenly, but dimly.
But once they do, we fall happily into the new pattern. Theo turns pyromaniacal, testing this and that theory about how much and what sort of paper to use for lighting, how and when to use the bellows, how to lay the wood—in tripod or crisscross formation—to achieve optimum ignition, air flow, and flame. He likes a proper blaze. There aren’t any fire lighters in the house so he experiments with methylated spirit and kerosene, though I absolutely forbid him to try turpentine or petrol.
So now he sits by the hearth in the evenings, feeding the stove, and I sit in an easy chair and do—well, nothing, really. There is no television in here, and I do not wish to read or knit or sew. I do not even think; best of all, I do not worry about Howard.
But I do talk about him. There are things I want Theo to understand, perhaps because I do not fully understand them myself; perhaps Theo’s perspective will help me form my own. For instance, there’s the way Howard can’t make sense of what he sees. He’s still afflicted by this mysterious, half-world blindness that they told me sometimes happens after a stroke and that has a name—hemianopia—which I think nevertheless is a beautiful, mysterious word, evoking a kind of sorcery that I take the condition to resemble, rather than the condition itself. Because, I tell Theo carefully, it’s as if dark veils have been dropped by magic down and across the edges of Howard’s eyes. Half of his visual field on both sides has simply vanished. But the black mischief is in his brain and not his eyes, and so he only partially understands that this has happened. He isn’t aware, or he forgets, that half of the world doesn’t exist for him anymore, and so he doesn’t know, until he stumbles and falls, that this hidden half is full of obstacles. He doesn’t know why voices without faces suddenly start talking at him, or why dangerous hands apparently unattached to human beings loom out of nowhere and push pills in his mouth, and wash and shave and dress him, and guide him from place to place. Often if he’s in a room with more than one person at a time he gets confused and doesn’t know who’s saying what; then he’ll just ignore everything, or cry, and then there’s no getting through to him. I tell Theo I think it must be like being asked to understand several conversations in different languages all going on at once. Poor Howard, no wonder he gives up. At the hospital, they also told me that the condition improves over time, in some cases. Which can mean only that in others, it doesn’t.
As I was explaining it all, the sound of this wafting, magical word—hemianopia—made me nostalgic for that time at the hospital, before I knew what the future would be like. Even while I was being told what it meant, I could not associate such a lovely word with the benighted life that would lie ahead for Howard. I tried to explain that to Theo, too, and it’s possible I lost my thread, because I’m not sure how much of it he understood or even took in. I’m sure he’s intelligent enough, and anxious to share in my practical, day-to-day concerns, but I keep being surprised at a way he has sometimes of turning very still and not reacting to what I say. At such times, I can almost see my words fly toward and through him and away again in another direction, as if they were moths or butterflies and he were a column of pure light or spinning air. I will keep explaining it to him, the hemianopia, and how it affects Howard. How it would upset anyone. Although, of course, it’s Howard who really needs to understand it, but fails to.
Since Theo’s attention span—his very presence, actually—is a fragile thing, I decide in the end against showing him the Stoneyridge album, and the photographs of Adam. What could he be expected to make of them? Instead, I go through them again several times alone, in my room late at night, and then I put them by with an idea I won’t want to see them again for a long while.
Another reason it wouldn’t be fair to foist a load of old family snaps on Theo is that he has no pictures to show me. Any question of where he himself is from is impossible for him. His accent isn’t distinctive, but I haven’t much ear for accents, anyway. Over several evenings his story emerges; he tells me, poor boy, that he doesn’t really belong anywhere. He doesn’t know either of his parents because he grew up with several sets of foster parents, none of whom he cares to describe. He says he has no family except maybe a brother somewhere (or a half-brother, it’s rather vague) who was born sometime after Theo was taken from his mother. He’s never met him and he doesn’t know where he is; he may not even be alive. As for friends, he has none to speak of. That’s because he never learned to mix, he says with sadness, and it’s quite true that living with other people, even just me and Howard, doesn’t come all that naturally to him. Sometimes during the day he vanishes without warning. It seems related to the way that, at intervals, he tunes out of a conversation. But at least these days he doesn’t disappear off to bed so early, right after Howard’s settled for the night. The evenings are less quiet than they were, and not nearly as long.
I didn’t let Howard see the photographs either, because as long as there’s no improvement in his sight he can’t make sense of
pictures. Besides, they’re old; what’s needed around here are new pictures. When I next email Adam I may tell him I’m going to get back in the habit of taking photographs. I dismiss at once the wild thought of taking some of Theo and sending them to him. I haven’t mentioned Theo to Adam. There’s no particular reason why not, except perhaps that Adam is equally capable of interrogating me on some minor detail of life or completely passing over something important, and either way making me feel half-witted. Most mothers endure that with their grown-up children, I suspect. But there must be new things to photograph, if I only look about me again. It’s Theo’s presence that enables me to raise such a possibility; it’s another of the things I think about now, in the evenings. I feel encouraged, in the literal sense. It could really be that I am finding courage.
Theo likes it when he finds a log with a slug on it; he opens the door of the stove, delivers it with a flip of the little brass shovel into the jaws of hell and with glad horror reports how it writhes in the heat, discharges its bubbling goo, and shrivels to nothing. He times it. Some evenings he runs contests, searching with the poker through the logs for a batch of slimy contestants and using the hearth brush to sweep them along and into the shovel. Then he tips them all into the flames and watches. He awards points for wriggle performance, slime leakage, and length of survival; last one to die is the winner. Some honor, I say. Several times I complain it’s cruel. I tell him I don’t want to see them suffer.
“They’re slugs. They don’t suffer,” he says.
“How do you know that?” I say.
“How can they? They haven’t got any nerves, so they haven’t got anything to suffer with. And even if they did have nerves they’ve got no brains, so they’ve got no way of knowing they’re suffering.”
