by Nick Louth
There was no way out of it, we’d have to go around to look for the daft old bat ourselves. Reluctantly, Eunice agreed to cancel her Ayurvedic massage with Tom and come with me round to Isleworth to look for her. Despite my great haste, we soon got stuck in slow moving traffic on the M25.
“So where could she have gone?” Eunice said.
“Well, Dad’s buried at Hanwell cemetery, so we’ll start there. Apart from that I don’t have much of a clue.”
“Do you think she could get Maurice all that way?” she said.
“If she remembered to charge him up. However, I recall her trying to find somewhere to pour old chip oil into the battery compartment, having seen on TV that you can run tractors on it.”
“I suppose that’s encouraging under the circumstances. I think we should start from her house, and follow the route she would have to have taken.”
“Assuming she’s going to the cemetery,” I said.
Our first stop was at Mrs Harrison’s, who said Dot had not returned. Letting myself into Dot’s house, I phoned every number on her emergency contact list. That included all the social service organisations, the old folks away-day groups and the community centre. I even phoned Mary Asterby of the WI to see if Dot was there. No luck.
We then drove to the cemetery, passing from the noise of the Uxbridge Road to the quiet beyond the mock-gothic arch. There was almost no one around. We took a while to locate my father’s grave, which was further back than I recalled. The fact that I couldn’t remember exactly where it was filled me with guilt. The black glossy granite headstone, with its simple inscription and its space for Dot, still looked relatively new. The same could not be said for the flowers in the vase beneath which had wilted away years ago. There was no evidence that anyone had visited the grave recently. Certainly I hadn’t been for many years.
Baffled how to continue, we then drove back to Dot’s house. Eunice picked through the family photographs, asking questions about where Dot and Geoffrey got married, where they went on honeymoon and where they were happiest. “I mean if she’s gone to meet him, she’d probably choose somewhere were they were very happy together, wouldn’t she?”
“That’s a brilliant idea,” I said. “Unfortunately I can’t recall too many details, not having been alive at the time.”
“Come on, Bernard, she must have told you.”
“They were married in Ripon, so she wouldn’t be able to get there easily. The honeymoon was on the Isle of Man, if I remember rightly. But as for where they were happiest, I really don’t know.”
By six o’clock we were getting peckish, so decided to go in search of a pizza or curry. We walked the same route, out of Frobisher Road and up Twickenham Road towards Hanwell, that Dot might have taken. Despite the roar of traffic, there seemed a warm, pleasant light and a sweet but pungent aroma. The latter I put that down to the fact that we were just over a hundred yards away from the giant West Middlesex Drainage Works.
Just before Isleworth railway station we passed an overgrown embankment leading down to a culvert, choked with supermarket trolleys and litter. Something down there drew my eye. Amongst the rubbish, I could see an upended red mobility vehicle. When I pointed it out to Eunice she put a hand over her mouth. Gingerly, I made my way through the broken and rusted railings and descended ten feet on a slippery track. I righted the vehicle and inspected it. It was the same make and model as my mother’s, though the plastic panelling had been smashed on the left-hand side. On the steering column was a decisive identification mark: a plastic badge bought for Dot by Jem, bearing the slogan ‘Hell’s Grannies’. This was Maurice all right, but where was Dot? My heart was hammering as I poked through the dock weeds and ragwort that grew all around the culvert. For all my machinations about getting my hands on Dot’s inheritance, I realised that I would give it all up forever, just to know that she was safe and alive.
Beyond the coke bottles, the odd syringe, dog excrement and broken glass there was nothing. The odd thing was that the vehicle could never have been driven down here at all, and Dot would never have been strong enough to push it. Something happened here, involving someone else other than Dot. I had no idea what, but it didn’t look good.
“Do you think your mother might have caught a train to London?” Eunice said.
“It’s possible.”
“If she’d left Maurice at the station, it might have been hooligans who tossed it down here after she’d gone.”
“That’s the most optimistic scenario I can think of,” I said.
We walked up to Isleworth Station, hoping to find some platform staff who might have remembered Dot passing through today. Though the ticket office was manned, the fellow there said he’d only come on duty half an hour before. There seemed no one else to ask. The platforms above, which spanned St John’s Road, had just a scattering of travellers. They were all on the north side, the line heading into Waterloo. The other platform was deserted. I crossed to it, and saw that anyone standing here would have had an excellent view of whatever happened to Maurice, and possibly to Dot, at the embankment.
Something at the edge of recollection was nudging me about why my mother may have gone to London. There was a rhyme that Dad used to sing to me and Yvonne when we were children:
‘A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His beak can hold more than his belly can.’
There was something about that rhyme that meant something to them as a couple. Something related to how they met. Suddenly I realised.
“Come on, Eunice, let’s get dinner up in town. I think that’s where we might find my mother.”
So we took the train to Waterloo and changed for the Northern Line on the underground where we mingled with the pre-theatre crowds. However, at Charing Cross we emerged and crossed Trafalgar Square. Overhead enormous flocks of pigeons were wheeling overhead, changing from grey to white as they turned in the dying light.
“Come on, we’ve got to hurry I said,” as I steered my baffled wife through numerous underpasses and not a few Pelican crossings. We walked down the Mall, and took an immediate left turn into Horse Guards Road. To the left, beyond Horse Guards Parade and the imperial statues of Clive, Kitchener and Mountbatten were the great institutions of contemporary power: Downing Street, the Treasury and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. To the right, was a magnet of a different and more emotional sort. There was St James’s Park, looking golden and peaceful in the gathering dusk, with a slight mist gathering over the lake. The cackle of ducks and the cawing of crows drowned out the distant roar of traffic. Couples sat close on benches, while breathless joggers did their early evening turns around the paths, iPods strapped to their waists. In the centre, on Duck Island, a solitary pelican could be seen, spreading its wings.
“We’ve come a long way, Bernard, I do hope you’re right,” said Eunice.
“I’m pretty certain this is where she’ll be.” My recollections had gradually crystallised around a story that my mother told me many times when I was young. That on 20 July 1936, in the full flush of her youth, she had taken a long lunchtime break from the offices in Pall Mall to sit in St James’s Park. While she was there a young gentleman had walked past, and tipped his hat at her. A few minutes later he walked back, tipped his hat again, and then sat at the other end of the bench. Nothing was said for a while, but as my mother ate a sandwich a pelican wandered out from the lake and walked right up to the bench. My mother took a corner of the sandwich, and tossed it to the bird. Thus emboldened, the bird walked right up and took the rest, right out of my mother’s hands. “So much for lunch”, was what she said to the gentleman, as he chased the bird away.
“He was ever so polite,” was what Dot had always said. “He said ‘I hope it would not be too forward if I were to offer to replace the meal you have lost, in my company?’ ”
So off they went to a Lyons Corner House for tea, even though my mother risked trouble for being late back at work. I retold the story to Eunice as we walked around the
lake, carefully looking at each bench in turn. Fifty yards ahead, close to the Blue Bridge which spans the lake at its narrowest part, I saw my mother. In her best coat with her headscarf on and her hands resting on an umbrella, I could still imagine the scene 72 years ago which had inspired this act of remembrance, and in her slight figure I could even see the elegant and innocent young woman who was so affected by it.
My mother didn’t look up as I approached, but she didn’t seem surprised we had found her.
“Hello, Mum,” I said, sitting on the bench next to her.
“Hello, Bernard.”
“We’ve been on a wild pelican chase to find you, you know. We’ve all been very worried.”
“I’ve been here since ten o’clock this morning, waiting. He’s not turned up like he said he would.”
“That’s men for you,” muttered Eunice under her breath.
“Mum,” I said. “It’s getting a bit chilly now. I think we’d better leave it for today, don’t you?”
She nodded and let me help her up, as frail as a bird under the thick wool of her coat.
“Come on, let’s get you a nice cup of tea. Then we can take you home with us. I think that’s what Geoffrey would have wanted, don’t you?”
