by Susan Lewis
He realised now that many thoughts didn’t need words, only perception and feeling. For instance, he knew where he was standing, and that the weather was cold and the ground underfoot was wet. He didn’t need to utter the words to himself, he just knew it. Operating with instincts as opposed to thought was a natural process that required no decisions or explanations. It just was, and reminded him that he was still aware, still functioning, still alive. When he looked at the natural world he understood that it only existed for him, for everyone, in their minds, because if the senses couldn’t absorb and evaluate it, and if no one had the wit to admire or fear or tend it, it would be as though it wasn’t there. What would a world be like without trees and fields, no sky, no sun, no sea, no stars? Time would have no meaning once he lost the ability to read a clock, but what would that change in his mind?
His brain was shrinking, his memory was rolling away like a wave – brainwave? – from the shore, never to return. He’d come to understand now, in a way he’d never considered before, that life was only possible because of that part of the brain called a memory. It was where everything was stored, to be recalled when the eyes saw something, or someone, familiar. If it was a person, or an object, or an event that he’d never seen before, he’d rely on someone else’s knowledge, which came from their memory, to explain it, and then it would be locked away in his. The same with things he heard or touched or smelled. Everything had to be remembered, or there was nothing. If he couldn’t recapture words he had learned he’d have no language, if he couldn’t remember how to walk, he’d go nowhere, if he forgot how to feel he’d be no one.
He believed that most days, and most hours of the day, he was lucid. Lisa assured him he was, and he believed her, because he had no reason not to. He’d experienced shifts in his consciousness, however, when he’d either lost track of time, or failed to recognise straight away where he was. How long did those lapses last? Where did he go, exactly, when they occurred? Was he suffering a stroke? Was his grasp on reality draining away, like sand through his fingers? When there was no more reality, what then? Hallucination? Confusion? Chaos?
‘Dad? Dad, what are you doing standing there?’
Turning around he saw Rosalind coming down through the garden towards him, looking pretty in her dusky pink wool coat and scarf. He put on a smile as he held out his arms. She used to run into them as a child and he’d swing her up so high that she’d shriek and laugh and cling to his face with all her might.
‘You used to flatten my nose,’ he told her, bringing her into a hug.
‘I what?’ she said, kissing his cheek. ‘Where’s Lawrence? Did you collect him from school?’
A wasteland appeared before him, with no stones to pick up and turn into words.
‘Ah, there he is,’ she said, spotting him in the meadow. ‘You shouldn’t allow him to go so close to the lake unless you’re down there with him. What if Lucy’s ball ended up in the water? Lawrence,’ she shouted. ‘Come on, time for tea.’
Hearing her voice Lucy began bounding up to the garden, leaving Lawrence to fetch the ball from where it had landed.
‘How long have you lot been out here?’ Rosalind demanded, trying to tamp down Lucy’s enthusiasm, while ruffling her ears. ‘You must be freezing. I know I am.’
‘Oh, you’re just a girl,’ David teased. ‘We boys don’t feel the cold, do we, Lawrence?’
‘No,’ Lawrence agreed. ‘We’re tough and strong and even if the temperature was absolute zero, which is the lowest it can possibly go, we could stand it.’
‘And what is absolute zero?’ David asked, falling in beside him as they started towards the house.
‘Minus two hundred and seventy-three point fifteen centigrade,’ Lawrence replied without hesitation. ‘Mum, can we have pizza for tea and Coca-Cola?’
‘No, we’re having shepherd’s pie with a very small helping of apple crumble to follow.’
‘A big one!’ Lawrence demanded. ‘Are you having tea with us?’ he asked David.
‘I was hoping I might, if there’s enough,’ David replied.
‘Of course there’s enough,’ Rosalind called back over her shoulder. ‘There always is for you.’
‘Can Lucy have shepherd’s pie?’ Lawrence asked. ‘It’s her favourite.’
‘You say that about everything, except her proper food, and I suspect that’s because you can’t share it.’
‘Yes I can, yes I can. She’d let me have some if I wanted it. Harry Clark says that if you rub a dog’s tummy long enough it will have a puppy, but that’s not true, is it?’
Rosalind scowled at her father before opening the door. To her that sounded as though the other children had been teasing Lawrence again.
‘No, it’s not true,’ David replied, sounding amused. ‘But you can tell Harry Clark that if he wants to rub Lucy’s tummy to give it a try, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind a bit.’
‘Do you have homework?’ Rosalind asked, unwinding her scarf as she unbuttoned her coat.
‘Maths and History. We’re doing Roman numerals and Roman emperors … Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula …’
‘All right, all right, get some juice and off you go upstairs. Tea should be ready in about an hour.’
‘Can I show you my homework when I’ve finished?’ he asked David.
‘I should hope so,’ David assured him.
While Rosalind took their coats into the utility room, David put on the kettle, then glanced through his notebook as he waited for her to finish playing back her messages.
‘Oh Dad, you haven’t got that thing again, have you?’ she complained, catching sight of it before he put it away.
‘If I’d forgotten it I might not have remembered to ask …’
‘If you’re going to mention Jerry, please don’t,’ she jumped in. ‘I haven’t spoken to him for over a week, but I’m sure he hasn’t changed his mind about wanting a divorce.’
David nodded slowly, realising this was possibly something she’d told him before. ‘And what do you want?’ he asked cautiously.
With a sigh she shook her head uncertainly. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point trying to hang on to him, is there?’ she said. ‘In a way I wish he’d gone when I first found out about the affair, if he had I’d probably be over it by now. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it, it still upsets me and he isn’t worth it. Tell me about you, and what you’ve been up to since I last saw you.’
‘Well,’ he said, sitting back in his chair, and allowing a few moments for a memory or two to stir. His eyes went down as he considered taking out his book, but if it annoyed her … He was searching for answers, but though his thoughts were forming, trying to turn themselves into words, when they came to be spoken they were like snow falling on warm ground.
‘… then you might as well give up now,’ he heard her saying.
‘Mm?’ he said, looking up. How long had she been speaking? ‘Give up what now?’ he asked.
She glanced at him suspiciously. ‘Do you ever listen to anything I say?’ she demanded. ‘If you ask me, you only ever hear what you want to hear, so I don’t know why I bother wasting my breath.’
‘Give up what now?’ he pressed.
‘OK, give up being an MP. Now you’ve told the world you’ve got dementia no one trusts you any more. They’re not coming to the surgeries or town hall meetings unless they’re fellow sufferers, or someone in their family is, so what’s the point?’
‘The point,’ he said carefully, ‘is that these people need to be heard too, and they feel, understandably, that I will be more sympathetic to their issues than someone who’s fortunate enough not to be sharing their world.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, listen to yourself,’ she cried. ‘I’ve told you before, you wouldn’t be able to speak the way you do if you had any form of dementia.’
‘And you know this because?’
‘Because I do. Everyone does …’
‘Rosalind, you don’t know anything about i
t, other than what you’ve heard or seen on TV. Now, I’m not going to waste our time arguing about it,’ he pressed on, taking out his book to steal another glimpse. ‘There’s something I want to discuss with you that’s …’ Seeing what it was, he hesitated. This was going to be too difficult for her. He didn’t know how to begin. Would he even be able to carry it through? His eyes moved up to an earlier note, which he read quickly, and then said, ‘Lisa and I went to see a lawyer, mainly to sort out my will and who is going …’
‘And you’ve given her power of attorney,’ she broke in snappishly. ‘Yes, you told me, and why not? It’s what she’s after …’
‘Rosalind, stop,’ he said irritably. ‘What I’m trying to tell you is that I want to exercise my right to choose when I die.’
As her face drained, he realised he’d been too abrupt and made to reach for her hand as though to soften the words, but she whisked it away.
‘I’ve – I’ve tried to discuss this with Lisa,’ he stumbled on, ‘but I … Please listen,’ he said, as she started to walk away. ‘I’ve read a lot about it now, and I …’ Even though he was moving forward the ground was disappearing. ‘I don’t want you or Lisa to have to cope … Your lives are too precious …’
‘Hers might be,’ she snapped, ‘but you can’t speak for me when I …’
His hand went up. ‘Lisa feels … from my point of view.’ What was his point of view? What was he talking about? The wind was blowing, but nothing was moving.
‘… I mean it with all my heart, Dad, I’d rather kill myself than help her to kill you – and please don’t forget they are both mortal sins.’
His eyes briefly closed. ‘Darling, you are not a practising Catholic. Your mother …’
‘But I am still a Catholic, and there is nothing in this world that will induce me to help you or her to do what you’re asking. There’s nothing wrong with you, Dad. OK, you’re a bit absent-minded at times, but you always have been, it’s part of who you are, we all know that, and love you for it, so to start buying into all this crap she’s feeding you …’
‘Rosalind, that’s enough. I’m not going to allow you to speak about your mother like that …’
‘She’s not my mother.’
‘No, no.’ His head was hurting. There was something he needed to do now, but he couldn’t think what it was. It was vital, he had a sense of that, so why wasn’t it coming to him? He was the conductor who’d lost his orchestra again. He put his head down and forced himself to breathe. His instincts were begging for words. He was going to do this. He had to … He was in charge of his mind. It wasn’t the other way around … And yet who was he, if he wasn’t his mind?
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, how could he know? If he’d looked at the clock before, then he’d forgotten now what he’d seen. He couldn’t even be sure, immediately, of how long he had been here, but he was in Rosalind’s house and looking at her … That was all that mattered … His daughter. She looked worried, ready to cry, or shout, or shake him …
He put up his hands. He needed to laugh, or smile. Was he doing that? He must have been, because her expression was showing relief.
‘You were outside in the cold for too long,’ she told him.
He tried to remember when that was, but couldn’t. Then like threads being whisked away in the wind, he managed to catch hold of the tail end of some and remember what he’d been saying, why he was here. He knew instinctively that he had something to help him, but he couldn’t think what it was.
‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’ he asked, hoping she would guide him back on track.
‘I didn’t say anything. It was you who started talking about Mum … Oh please don’t start that again.’
He’d found his notebook. Ignoring her, he turned to the most recent entries and quickly scanned them. It was no good, he couldn’t marshal his thoughts. He was too tired, too stressed … He’d rather go and sit with Lawrence. He was peaceful and undemanding. With a sigh he said, ‘You’re angry, so I’m going to let it drop now, just please try, for my sake, to find it in your heart to …’ To find what? What was he attempting to say?
Since David had left for London that morning, with the instruction ‘get off train at Paddington, Miles will be waiting,’ written in his notebook, Lisa had been trying not to worry about whether he’d arrived safely and was coping all right. If he wasn’t she was sure she’d have heard, but even so she’d been in her study for over two hours now, struggling to compile a list of young musicians and sports stars who might be willing to become involved in their awareness campaign, and had still achieved next to nothing.
She’d imagined, when she’d dropped David at the station, that it was going to be a relief to spend some time alone, but it wasn’t happening like that at all. Instead she couldn’t seem to get past her edginess, or the guilty conscience that kept telling her she should have gone with him, even though he’d ferociously insisted he wasn’t such a bubble-head yet that he couldn’t get himself to London alone.
She glanced at the time and wondered if it was too early to call him. Perhaps she should try Miles instead, making it clear that he mustn’t let David know she was checking up on him. Deciding that was a good idea, she picked up the phone and pressed the auto dial to Miles’s mobile. After being diverted to voicemail she left a brief message asking Miles to call when he had a chance.
He rang an hour later to let her know that everything was fine. David was over at the Foreign Office with Colin Larch at the moment and was, as far as Miles knew, still intending to catch the three thirty train back to Bristol.
‘Will you go to the station with him?’ Lisa asked.
‘Of course, but I don’t think he’ll like it. He says we’re treating him like an imbecile and he hasn’t reached that stage yet.’
Easily able to imagine it, Lisa said, ‘Please don’t let him bully you into leaving him alone. We don’t want him to end up on the wrong Tube, or train, being whisked off to the middle of nowhere.’
‘Don’t worry, that’s not going to happen,’ Miles assured her. ‘I’ll call again when he’s on the way back so you’ll know what time to be at the station.’
After ringing off, Lisa returned to her study and this time managed to get the entire way through an email to Roxy asking for some suggestions on the best celebrities to contact for a charitable project. Then she sent another to Amy, with whom she’d spent hours on the phone the day David had gone public with his dementia, explaining and apologising and promising never to keep something so crucial to herself again. It was a relief not having to hide anything any more, but it still wasn’t the same as having Amy there. Her mother had taken the news badly, as though it was going to impact on her life and plans for the future, when, as Lisa had told her in a snappish moment, it actually wasn’t about her. Unfortunately that was becoming typical of Matilda these days, always thinking of herself first – maybe it was a symptom of getting old.
She didn’t want to be in touch with her other friends at the moment, all of whom had tried contacting her after hearing the news. She knew they meant well, but talking about David to people he barely knew, especially when it concerned something so sensitive, always left her feeling wretchedly disloyal. She hadn’t even called Tony again, in spite of the many times she’d wanted to. At least he had a way of raising her spirits and would no doubt remind her that there was a life beyond this diagnosis, but it wasn’t right to lean on him the way he’d offered. David would hate it if he knew and given the way Tony felt about her, it really wasn’t fair on him either.
Feeling a tight band closing around her head, and an ocean of unshed tears flooding her heart, she looked at the phone that was lying on her desk next to her coffee cup. There was one other person she could call, but she really didn’t know if she had the courage to. Feeling so vulnerable and afraid of whatever trick fate would play on her next, did she have what it took to set herself up for another blow?
In the end, without allowing h
erself any more time to dither, she picked up the phone and pressed in Rosalind’s mobile number.
After three rings Rosalind’s answer came cautiously down the line. ‘Hello?’
Lisa’s eyes were closed. She was so tense that her voice sounded ragged as she said, ‘Is that Rosalind?’
‘Yes. Who’s this?’
Lisa took a breath. ‘It’s Lisa,’ she said. ‘Please don’t hang up on me. We need to talk about your dad and what …’
‘I can’t believe … ! I’m sorry, I have nothing to say to you,’ and the next instant the line went dead.
Putting the phone back on the desk, Lisa took a shuddering breath and buried her face in her hands.
Rosalind was at a window table in Zizzi’s, the restaurant she and Sally often ate at when they were both coming into Clifton. Her mobile was still in her hand, and she was shaking with anger and shock.
Of all the nerve, calling her as though she had every right to discuss her father when, of course, she did as his wife, or she might have, were she not, as far as Rosalind was concerned, damned well responsible for whatever was going on with him – if indeed anything was, and for her, at least, the jury was still out on that. He’d been absolutely fine before Lisa Martin came along – OK, stressed, in grief denial and overworked, but that was normal for him. So if that woman thought she could grab control of David Kirby’s assets using some trumped-up assumption of dementia, then she was not only gravely mistaken, she was going to have a serious legal battle on her hands, because Rosalind had consulted a lawyer too.
‘Hey, is that you, Ros?’ someone said cheerily.
Though her pretty face was drawn with rancour, an inherent politeness was already forcing its way to the surface as she looked up to find one of the architects she often worked with beaming down at her. Since he was someone who she and her father – and mother – had always had a lot of time for, she was even able to inject some warmth into her tone as she said, ‘Ben. This is a nice surprise. What are you doing here?’
