by Alison Fell
The only man in evidence – an old fellow so chronically hunched that his head has retracted, tortoise-like, into his chest – shuffles his walking-frame determinedly along the corridor that borders the lounge. She can see no sign of Greta.
Taking her cue from Elsa, she pastes an inclusive smile on her face and hurries on by. They give way briefly to let the tortoise man speed past, then turn into a transverse corridor, at the end of which a window overlooks the staff car-park, and beyond it the dark ramparts of a fir forest. When Elsa stops at the last unit on the left Ingrid reads the sign on the door. Mrs Greta Laurie. At least it’s got her name on it.
Greta is lying on the single bed, dressed in a powder-blue fleece and navy jogging pants that are too short for her, revealing inches of puffy ankle above the tight ribbing of her popsocks. A nurse turns from the bedside locker, holding a plastic water jug. She’s small and stout, her short brown hair striped with highlights as blonde and thick as kindling-sticks. She eyes Ingrid appraisingly.
‘So you’ll be her daughter? Miss Henderson said you’d be coming.’ The accent is Antipodean, Australian probably; the badge on her tunic says Elaine. ‘Look, Greta!’ she cries, beating up a pillow and thrusting it under Greta’s shoulders, ‘It’s your daughter come to visit!’
Elsa marches round the bed and kisses her sister smartly on the forehead. ‘It’s Ingrid, Greta!’
Greta licks her lips, ignoring both of them; her eyes are fixed on Ingrid. Her hair is long and unkempt, pink scalp showing through on the crown; even her eyebrows are overgrown, white wires that curl fiercely up towards her forehead. The skin on her face is rough and dry and her eyes, red-rimmed, look girlishly tiny. She looks not blank, exactly, but politely puzzled.
Ingrid forces herself to sit down on the bed and take her hand. ‘It’s me, Mum!’ It strikes her that they’re all talking in exclamation points. Is this because there’s no vocative case in English, no salutary mode?
She realises that she can’t remember ever having seen her mother without makeup.
Elsa produces the two nighties from their M&S bag, flaps them in front of Greta, and lays them on the bed. ‘So what kind of sleep did she have?’ she asks Elaine.
‘Well, not so good again. We’ve settled her now, but she had us up all night.’ Planting a hand on Greta’s shoulder, Elaine shouts, ‘Didn’t you, dear?’
Ingrid wants to tell her that her mother is not, never has been, deaf.
Greta flinches away, scowling vigorously.Her eyes haven’t moved from Ingrid’s face. Her gaze is eerily disinterested, like that of a cat. Ingrid feels like stroking the furry fleece, establishing some definite principle of friendship.
Raising a finger, her mother tries to point. ‘You?’ Something is dawning on her face: suspicion, maybe, or a faltering surprise, followed suddenly by an almost theatrical expression of delight. She might be the Virgin Mary in a nativity play, bowled over by her first encounter with the angel. Her grip tightens on Ingrid’s hand. ‘Bow one truffle soup iyu!’ She shakes her head angrily, tears filling her eyes as she struggles to speak. Her lower lip juts. Clenching her hands into fists, she spits, ‘Fought cupid!’
Ingrid makes a wild guess.‘You’re not stupid at all, Mum.’
‘Yesh.’ Greta nods emphatically. ‘Tall rong!’
‘It’s the stroke, Mum. They’ll come back, the words. You’ll see. You just have to be patient.’
‘Now now, Greta, don’t go upsetting yourself …’ Elaine gives Ingrid a warning look as she bustles up to the bed. ‘I’ll just get her toiletted, shall I? Then you can take her through to the conservatory.’ Brooking no objection, she hoists Greta into a sitting position and scoops her legs sideways so that they dangle over the edge of the bed. ‘Oops-a-daisy!’ Greta sits there while Elaine moves the walking frame into range, observing her slippered feet with bewilderment.
Like a conjuror producing a rabbit from a hat, Elsa whips out a bag of Juicy Fruits and dangles it from her fingers. ‘Your favourite, Greta!’
Distracted, Greta twists her head round, trying to see. When Elsa tears open the packet and shakes out a sugar-crusted pastille her face crumples with impatience. Her mouth opens urgently, like a fledgling’s beak, so that Elsa the mother-bird can pop it in. Eyes closed, she chews with utter absorption.
The sight makes Ingrid feel bereft, as if the one glimpse of conscious awareness granted to her has been suddenly snatched away. It’s like watching someone surf the TV channnels, flicking through a series of discrete realities, none of which bears any relation to the one before. In the gaps between, nothing but white noise and static.
Amnesia, she thinks. From amnemon: forgetful. Amnemosini: forgetfulness.
Once she’s positioned Greta’s hands on the rubber grip of the walking frame, Elaine hooks an arm round her waist and coaxes her across the room. When the toilet door slides shut Ingrid rounds on Elsa. ‘Where on earth’s her makeup?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ Elsa says defensively. ‘Try the bedside locker. Or under the bed – I found her false teeth there the other day.’ Whisking the nighties off the bed, she folds them up and stows them in the bottom drawer of the dresser. On top there’s a vase of irises, their leaves yellowing in the oppressive heat of the room, their blue petals pale and papery.
In the locker she finds a handbag which contains only a purse, a comb, and an unopened packet of Rolos. Under the bed there’s nothing but a couple of sweet wrappers and a worrying residue of dust and fluff. She’s still furious, a free-floating turbulence that’s looking for someone to blame. The cleaners clearly aren’t up to scratch, and if it comes to that, why has no one bothered to comb her mother’s hair? Even if Elsa doesn’t pay much regard to such things, Greta certainly does. Is what seems like an oversight rather more than that? Unconscious jealousy? The plain sister’s revenge on the pretty one?
Tutting, Elsa snatches the irises out of the vase and dumps them into a swing-bin. The toilet flushes, and as the door begins to slide open she looks at Ingrid and hisses, ‘Don’t cry, whatever you do. You’ll only start me off.’
Emerging, Greta looks at them with surprise, as though she’s already forgotten who they are. After a few steps she stops dead and stares mutinously at the nurse.
‘Doesn’t want to walk today, does she?’ Elaine chirps. Elsa is already unfolding the collapsible wheelchair. Greta allows herself to be lowered into the seat, her feet lined up on the metal foot-rest. Elaine tucks a blue cellular blanket around her knees, which at least conceals the popsocks.
‘All set?’
The Unit is laid out on some kind of grid system. This time Elsa the expert turns right and whizzes Greta down another corridor, on either side of which open doors reveal more single beds, and frozen-faced relatives holding flowers. While Ingrid tries not to look in, Greta is uninhibited, and twists her head from side to side, her eyes darting curiously. Back straight, handbag clutched in her lap, she gives every evidence of enjoying the outing.
The Conservatory is full of plump sofas and armchairs; in the corner a music-centre stands on a trolley scattered with CDs. When Ingrid opens the sliding glass door to let in the air birdsong bursts into the room, a chorus of six sparrows perched on the veranda roof of the wing opposite. The porter is unloading Elsa’s plant from a wheelbarrow. It looks small and stranded in the centre of the patio. A man is smoking on a bench in the shade of the veranda, hunched over, cigarette cosied inside his fist. There’s no mistaking the catastrophic cough of emphysema.
Elsa has positioned the wheelchair between two cretonne-covered armchairs. She produces a pot of vanilla yoghurt from her bag and peels off the top, handing Greta a plastic spoon. Greta sups it avidly, hardly waiting to swallow one spoonful before shovelling in another.
‘Honestly,’ Elsa says, ‘Look at her, she’s starving hungry!’
Perched on the edge of the armchair, Ingrid nods encouragement. ‘Is that good, Mum?’ Greta’s eyes meet hers for a second. She wonders if she‘s imagined the gl
immer of gratitude.
As soon as she’s finished the yoghourt Greta closes her eyes and lets the pot loll stickily on the cellular blanket. ‘Ryre tout,’ she mutters, letting her chin sink on to her chest.
Ingrid smooths the hair back from her forehead. ‘Tired out?’ she ventures, and Greta’s head nods under her hand.
‘She probably had no sleep worth the mention,’ Elsa says, wiping milky smears from her sister’s upper lip.
Ingrid retrieves the handbag from Greta‘s lap, takes out the comb, and begins to tease out the snarls in her hair. ‘You used to like this, didn’t you?’ Greta nods again; although her eyes are still closed, a smile flits across her face, as if she does in fact remember.
Once the tugs are out she begins to ease the comb through rhythmically from root to tip. The fine white hairs, crackling with static, reach up to welcome the comb.She sees herself at 6 or 7, brushing out the long gold waves, plaiting and coiling, twisting the hair up into what Greta called a French Pleat. I love my hair combed, she’d sigh, luxuriating, I could just sit here for ever.
An expression of bliss has settled on Greta’s face. ‘You used to purr like a cat,’ Ingrid says, remembering how proud she used to feel, playing handmaiden, being allowed to perform the soothing rituals of beauty.
She digs out her makeup bag, squeezes Nivea on to her fingertips, and smoothes the cream into the dry skin on her mother’s face. Opening her eyes, Greta spots the bag and reaches for it. When Ingrid brings out her compact she grabs it, snaps it open, and glares at herself in the mirror. ‘Mesh!’ she accuses, seizing the powder puff and punishing her cheeks with it.
This time there’s no problem translating. Ingrid offers her own lipstick, although it’s too pale, not Greta’s habitual crimson. She’ll have to stop off at Boots, get her a new one. Greta winds the lipstick up dexterously, applies it to her lower lip, rolls the bottom lip over the top one to spread the colour, and finishes off with an expert cupid’s bow.
‘Well then!’ says Ingrid, smiling at the face that’s coming to light, the face that’s beginning to resemble her mother’s.
Eyebrows raised at her reflection, Greta pats her hair, touches the outer corners of her lips with a fingertip. Then she says something that might be ‘better’, and looks around with the bright questing expression of a Minister’s wife at a coffee mornng.
The emphysemic smoker has appeared in the doorway. A tall, stooping man, with a full head of greying hair, his eyes are grey and kind; he looks, Ingrid thinks, a good deal younger than any of the other inmates. He wheezes across the room and stops to lean on the back of a sofa and catch his breath.
‘All right, Greta?’ he says, but Greta sniffs, eyeing him as if he has committed some serious breach of protocol. ‘I’m Donny,’ he says, nodding to Ingrid.
‘Greta’s daughter,’ she explains quickly.
Her mother’s scowl is regal. ‘By tochter!’ she announces, with boastful scorn. Ingrid is embarrassed for her. It’s hardly the way to win friends and influence people, when you need all the friends you can get.
Donny catches Ingrid’s eye. ‘Aye well, we all have our good days and our bad, right enough.’ His voice is low-pitched, his smile rueful. He eases himself up straight and turns to go. ‘Better get across for my lunch, then. Awful slop they give you here, isn’t that right, Greta?’
‘Nice man,’ Ingrid observes when he’s out of earshot.
Elsa nods in agreement. ‘Used to work in the forestry. A widower, from up Blairgowrie way.’
Ingrid raises her eyebrows. ‘You’ve been chatting him up, then?’
Elsa gives her a look. ‘We’ve had a smoke now and then,’ she concedes, jerking her head at the patio. ‘His son and daughter are having to sell his house now, to pay the fees. Who makes these kinds of laws, eh?’
Greta sighs loudly, as if to remind them that she’s the rightful centre of attention. Her gaze is fixed on Ingrid’s small backpack, which is propped against the cretonne skirt of her armchair.
‘Duckflap,’ she says conversationally, wagging a finger at it.
Ingrid makes a deduction. ‘Yes, it’s my rucksack, Mum.’
‘Rucksnap,’ Greta agrees with a nod of satisfaction.
Ingrid brings out the contents and shows them to her. Sunglasses, cigarettes. Hutchinson, stained with suntan oil and still gritty with Aegean sand. ‘Nothing much interesting , I’m afraid!’
With a dismissive shrug Greta turns her attention to Ingrid’s face, studying her with a critical frown that’s all too familar. ‘I don’t like your hair like that,’ she announces, her enunciation perfect. ‘Too short!’
Elsa mutters ‘Would you credit it?’ and Ingrid has to laugh. For once she’d forgotten to steel herself, to remind herself that just when you think love has soothed it, the savage breast will bite right back at you. But at least spite is something she recognises, and the relief is so great that she hardly feels the sting.
‘Well, Mum, now you’re sounding more like yourself!’
58
When his confusion lifts, the way ahead is open like a road. But Pericles knows the rule: you can no more go inside a shop without money than turn up at a wedding without gifts: sugared almonds, rice to throw. On the steps of the grocery he agonises: there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, his mother says; say thank-you, Pericles, do you say thank-you?
Inside the goods wait for him on shelves taller than a man, leaning towards each other across the narrow aisles. Markos the shopkeeper is nowhere to be seen. Away from the heat-shimmer and its floating insects Pericles blinks in the gloom. He peers, edging his way along an aisle. There’s no method in the stacking, no logic in the grouping of categories. Cereals jostle soap-powder, jars of olives sit next to toilet rolls. Hypnotised by the disorder, he becomes more agitated. Rice could be anywhere, with beer or baked beans or honey. There’s no time to waste, but where is a man in a hurry to look?
Someone enters the shop with a bright cry of Kalimera – Kyria Dora, there’s no mistaking the voice – and Markos answers faintly from the inner regions. Pericles’ eye falls on a display of small netting bags, each one tied with a pink silk ribbon. Inside are pink and white sugared almonds. After a struggle with the elastic fastening he manages to detach one bag from the display card. Shivering in the cold draught of air from the cheese cabinet, he weighs it in his palm. At last he spots the rice, a whole shelf of it in 250 gram boxes. He picks one out and hides it inside his jacket.
Markos is calling his name, his voice loud with irritation. He advances on Pericles, wiping his hands on his apron. His bulk looms in the narrow aisle.
‘Okay, old man. Now put these back where they came from, eh?’
Pericles shakes his head and stares stubbornly at the ground.
‘Are you going to a wedding, Pericles?’ A kind voice, tinkling like goat bells. It’s Kyria Dora, smiling, in a white dress, with loaves in her basket.
He nods in a fury of relief. When Markos tries to grab the gifts from him he clutches them tightly to his chest. Now that he has what he needs, the very thought of leaving empty-handed is enough to shut off the light in his head and fill it with blackness. Red-faced with anger, the shopkeeper shouts out a bad word with apologies to the lady. Putting a restraining hand on his arm, Kyria Dora whispers in his ear. Markos shakes his head roughly and slaps the cheese cabinet with his hand, like a man whose pride is offended.
‘Keep your money, Kyria! I’ve just had it with him. Finish! Kaput, you hear?’ He glares at Pericles. ‘He’s scaring my customers away, that’s what, and I’ve had enough of it!’
Pericles feels the wind go out of him. His knees are sinking under him like baggy sails. He wants to explain the urgency, but what good is it trying to explain to people who don’t know what’s what? He can see in Markos’ eyes that he’ll never understand – that it’s nothing to do with taking or stealing. That the world is a void which only tribute will fill.
Markos takes a phone from his apron
pocket and hits the buttons, and the darkness closes in. Above his head the shelves teeter, sharp-edged and vengeful. The aisle is a dark space, narrow like a cell. Outside, the clear air, the sky like a bowl held out for offerings.
He tries a step towards the door but his knees refuse
‘He’s not well!’ Kyria Dora exclaims, reaching out her arm to steady him. ‘Come and sit down.’ She steers him to a chair beside the checkout and makes him sit, pushing his head gently down between his knees. Pericles holds on to the gifts, the almonds in their netting bag heavy and hard as marbles. When the blackness eases he lifts his head cautiously.
‘Better?’ she says, with worry on her face. Pericles gestures at the door and the bright square of sunlight that falls between the patio awnings.
‘You want to go outside?’
‘First he wants to come in,’ Markos snorts, ‘then he wants to go out!’
‘I’ll take him,’ she says. ‘Can you walk now, Pericles?’ Putting her arm around his waist, she helps him out and sits down beside him on the step where he belongs.
He is eating the cheese pie Kyria Dora has bought him when the police car stops at the kerb. Inside he spots his friend the Sergeant. With the police car is a white van with seats and two people in it.
‘Now then, my friend,’ says the Sergeant. ‘Maybe you should just give Markos the stuff, eh?’
‘Let him keep the damn things,’ Markos growls, ‘What do I care?’ He kicks at a box of tomatoes so that they jump out, and stamps back into the shop. Pericles watches the tomatoes spin across the patio and roll down the steps and into the road. He’s afraid to look at the Sergeant.
‘You’ll put me in jail?’
‘Not at all! But I’ll be frank with you, Pericles. We’re worried about you. Isn’t that right, Dora?’ He glances at Kyria Dora, who nods emphatically. ‘The truth is that you’ve not been doing so well lately, have you. At your age you deserve to put your feet up a bit, get some looking after.’
