“I am so sorry,” Hanna apologised. “Just an hour ago she could not even stand up. I can’t believe she can do it now. I am so sorry for wasting your time.”
“Don’t worry,” reassured the doctor with sudden surprising kindness. “Bruises and bone injuries in the elderly are very dangerous. You could not have known.”
He turned to Biddy. “Do you need anything for the pain?”
“No.”
“Well then, you are free to go.”
“Thank you. We’ll need to order a taxi and then we are out of your way.”
“Fine. Get one of the nurses to arrange that for you. Have a good day,” he said and was off to the next patient.
The taxi ride back into town was much shorter than Hanna would have imagined. In her mind the drive in the ambulance to the hospital had taken forever, whereas the return journey seemed to take only a few minutes. Just before the taxi reached the car park Hanna remembered that she didn’t have enough cash on her to pay for the ride and she had to ask the driver to find her a cash point. Her debit card still dispensed money but this reminded her again that she really did need to check her finances urgently. Suddenly she remembered Billy and how he still had her car keys.
Billy was on his lunch break when she got to the supermarket but he had left the car keys with the manager for Hanna to collect. What a gem that boy was. She had to make sure to return and thank him properly.
At long last the taxi returned to the car park and the driver even got out and helped Biddy into the convertible. Hanna tipped him generously then paid the extortionate parking fee and got into her own car.
Chapter 6 Lunch
As she pulled onto the drive way at her parents’ house she saw Walter still in his sports gear, cleaning the bicycle outside the garage.
“Did you have a good ride?” she asked him.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I did. I was waiting for you to see if you are up for a late lunch?” he said with a wink.
“Dad, please don’t get mad at me but mother fell on the tarmac,” Hanna told her father sheepishly.
“What? Is she all right?” Walter asked, concerned.
“Yes, she is fine. We have been to the hospital for an X-ray. She didn’t break anything but it is my fault. I let her walk in high heels. Please don’t be angry with me.”
“I am not angry Pumpkin,” Walter said with barely concealed restraint. “But let that be a lesson to you. Your mother is fragile and needs careful supervision. So tell me, what happened?”
Hanna briefly explained to him the events of the morning. It was obvious he wanted to scold her but to his own surprise he managed to let it go.
It took a little effort to wake up his wife and to get her out of the car. Biddy’s leg was much better even than it had been at the hospital and much to Hanna’s relief it now seemed unlikely that she would have to use a walking stick at all.
Biddy was in a great mood as she was escorted up the path to the front door by both her husband and her daughter.
“Be careful with her elbow,” Hanna said to Walter. “She has a little bruise there, too.”
Walter rolled his eyes but refrained from a comment.
“This is nice,” she turned to Hanna and said: “Can you stay?”
“You are in luck,” Hanna replied. “I can and I will.”
“Good. I like you.”
Once they were all in the house Biddy got hold of the newspaper and started to read some articles to the other two. Walter unpacked the shopping and put everything away.
“It’s late and I am starving. I am only going to make some of the ready meals now. I’ll use the fresh food when I cook dinner tomorrow. Are you happy with that?” she asked her father.
“I guess that will be fine,” he said magnanimously.
At lunch Biddy greedily dug in and between bites kept smiling happily at her two companions. Walter ruled that it was not too late for an afternoon nap, especially after all the excitement, and he accompanied his wife to the living room. After she had nodded off quickly and peacefully, Walter tiptoed out of ear shot then marched with determination to the kitchen.
“Now, tell me what is going on with you and your job,” he demanded to know.
“Dad, there is nothing going on. Can’t I take a little time out to re-charge my batteries? Stop grilling me. I’ve had an exhausting day.”
“I see!” he said and paced up and down the kitchen in agitated contemplation.
“On a different matter, Dad, do you have Internet in the house?”
“Yes, the computer in the study has Internet. Your brother wrote down all the passwords and codes on a piece of paper. If I can find it you can knock yourself out. It is even broad speed or whatever you call it. It all came free with the new telephone or something.”
“Fantastic. Could you please try and find that piece of paper now? I need to check my bank account.”
“You will let us know if you need money, won’t you?” Walter said instantly. “We can always help you out if needs be.”
“Thanks Dad but I am fine. I got a huge lump sum as bonus payment last month and that should be completely untouched in a savings account.”
“Well, ‘should be untouched’ is not a statement coming from someone in control of their finances,” Walter said indignantly.
“Never mind,” Hanna sighed.
“I do mind, Pumpkin. You can lead the life you want and make whatever choices you like but you always need to stand on solid ground financially. Everything else then falls into place. Has all my time trying to teach you amounted to nothing?”
“My finances are fine, Dad, even if I don’t always know the exact balance and things like that. I don’t think you appreciate just how difficult it is to live a normal life in the job that I do. I even make lists before I go on a trip so I will remember what I need to do when I get back, but I often can’t find the lists or can’t make sense of them anymore. Let alone find the energy because of the jet lag and night flights to remember to pay the bills. It is so easy to forget things, regardless of the gravity of the consequences.”
“Most of your colleagues seem to manage to keep on top of it. I have never read that cabin crew are notoriously known for late payments and missing appointments.”
“Be that as it may, you can rest assured that I am financially sound,” Hanna insisted.
“I am only trying to help you my Pumpkin,” Walter said sharply.
“I know but you would help me more by getting that piece of paper.”
Walter sighed and went upstairs to his study to search through his papers.
He switched on the computer and while it booted up he went to his large steel drawer unit and found the piece of paper on the first attempt under ‘I’ for Internet. It certainly paid off to invest some time in organising oneself, he thought smugly. He looked at the many folders of his family chronicle. At some point he would have to put all of this information on a computer file. He needed to make sure his children understood his filing system; otherwise they would never be able to make sense of it.
He wondered if Biddy’s mind was like this collection of papers: a huge pile of memories that were useless without the right index? Or was the index right but the memories had all shifted and changed location? What a shame to see all her memories and experiences lost, all the accumulated life that was now gone from her mind and her life. But he couldn’t allow himself to get all worked up about it yet again and dwell on something that he couldn’t change.
He heard Hanna come up the stairs and knock on the door.
“Can I come in?” she said, but she had already entered the room. “You look unhappy. Is something the matter?”
“No, I am fine. I was just thinking about memories. You know how little importance I used to give to them; so much that I did not even take many photographs. Now I wish I had paid more attention. I can see how vital they are for a person to be complete. I saw so many movies about amnesia, they all left me cold. Now I apprecia
te the tragedy.”
“You are not going to get memories back whether you grieve for them or not. Let’s just be happy that mother is beyond the point where she cares. Remember that awkward phase she went through when she got all upset about the same thing constantly and became aggressive. She seems pretty content now, with or without the memories.”
“Oh, her anger period! That was an awful time. I think the doctors are giving her anti-depressives now and that is why she feels better; they are just masking everything.”
“Does it make any difference? Whether it is the pills or the progress of the disease, the main point is that we are lucky she is her cheerful old self. Although she has become a little child, at least she is happy,” Hanna pointed out.
“Is she really happy, or is it just because of the drugs?” Walter asked provocatively. He felt irritated.
“How could it be any different? The effect is the same.”
“Oh I don’t know Pumpkin. We don’t know what it feels like underneath the drugged surface. Look at all the ‘happy’ junkies, they do nothing constructive. I mean, good on them for being high and happy, as they are, but their lives just fall apart. They forget to eat, to wash and brush their teeth and they contribute nothing to society. We don’t want that for Biddy do we?”
“Well, her life is already falling apart, Dad. You can make sure she gets washed but for the rest of it: I think it is great if her last years are good ones, by any means reasonable.”
“I know Pumpkin, I know. And you are doing a great job with this. Now here is the piece of paper, I am sure you understand it much better than I do. The computer won’t be ready for you to work with for another half hour or so. It takes forever to get started. You might as well make yourself a cup of tea before you come back up here.”
“Thanks, Dad. What are you going to do until mother wakes up?”
“I will continue with my family chronicle. I have started to write everything down that I can remember, before I lose my marbles as well. I was just imagining you kids throwing it all away because it is on paper. You must promise me to look carefully through my stuff after I have gone. Don’t dump it all without having a look, please,” he begged.
“I promise we will have a good snoop around.”
When Hanna finally got to check her finances she was relieved to confirm that her money matters were all in good order but she was getting tired of the continued drama of it all.
She had once carried a cheque for a parking ticket in her handbag for weeks without ever sending it off and had a rather indignant phone conversation with the council when she received her second reminder with a late payment fee. Hanna complained outspokenly about the audacity of the council to claim her cheque had never arrived. When she found the cheque weeks later she was mortified and called the council to apologise to the civil servants for her behaviour.
Another time she failed to pay the road tax in time because she only remembered the day before it was due and she could not find the insurance or the M.O.T. Certificate. The day she was meant to do all of this her plane had got stuck in Delhi because of ground fog. When she got back to London days later than scheduled it was a close friend’s birthday party in Manchester. She had to drive there straight from the airport and only when she drove back south did the tax matter cross her mind again, by which time she had no more chance to meet the deadline and incurred the penalty.
Today she found emails from almost everyone in her address book: news had travelled quickly. She was tempted to send a short impersonal reply to all of them to reassure everyone that she was fine but that would be a lie. She was expecting a big emotional breakdown at some point and probably owed many of her friends a more detailed and honest explanation about what was going on in her life but she just couldn’t do it now: she had come here to forget.
There were several letters from the airline: her manager urged her to get in touch immediately; a woman from human resources, whom she had never heard of, sent her a document with company policies that should be ‘informative and relevant’; the trade union had also sent several mails, offering her any support that she needed and giving her phone numbers of union reps, a 24 hour help line and of a solicitor who was on their pay roll.
The only one she replied to was that from her brother, Henrik, which was a generic update he sent out once in a while to tell her and lots of other people about his life. She informed him briefly that she had taken temporary residence back home to spend time with their mother. He was unlikely to find anything unusual with her decision. He lived in his own little world and was not very perceptive when it came to other people.
She complimented him about the way he had installed the Internet at their parents’ house which - as he could see - she found very easy to use and invited him to come and meet her at the family home, if he had an opening in his busy schedule.
She knew it was unlikely he would turn up. Since he had had a new girlfriend, he was hard to get hold of and unwilling to do anything that did not revolve around her schedule and interests.
As she closed down the computer she heard the telephone ring downstairs. Her father must have been standing right next to it because he seemed to be answering it immediately. She walked down the stairs and heard him speaking quietly, explaining to the caller that he had to do this because of an ill person in the house being asleep. He was listening for some time to the reply from the other end. At first he looked confused and bewildered, then knowingly amused and eventually he turned to Hanna and said:
“It is for you. It is a...follow up...call from the paramedic. He wants to speak to you.”
With a broad grin he handed her the receiver and gestured for her to take the cordless phone upstairs away from her sleeping mother.
Hanna took the call upstairs.
“To what do I owe the honour of your call?” Hanna asked him when she was out of earshot.
“I just wanted to see if you were free at all while you are staying with your parents. Maybe I could take you out for dinner tonight or tomorrow?”
“Today is a bit short notice,” Hanna said, “but tomorrow would be fine. Thank you for the magazines, by the way. They were well received.”
“I thought you would not leave your mother alone in the hospital.”
“Yes, I wouldn’t have,” Hanna admitted. “So thank you very much.”
“I better let you get on, then. Shall we say 7pm at the Indian on Queen’s Square?”
“Perfect.”
When Hanna came back down the stairs shortly after, Walter looked up from his notes with raised eyebrows.
“Tell your friends not to call here while your mother is asleep. We were lucky she did not wake up. She needs her rest, especially today.”
“I didn’t exactly expect a call and I didn’t give him my number, let alone yours. He must have got it from the phone book.”
“What did he want? A date?”
“I guess. I am going out for a meal with him tomorrow.”
“I thought you were here to see us? Now you are off dating.”
“One evening, one meal. No need to be so dramatic, Dad! If you like I’ll cancel.”
Walter shook his head and without verbal comment he turned his attention back to his chronicle papers on the table.
“I brought a portable DVD player and some films for mother,” Hanna said. “When she wakes up we could watch some of her old favourites.”
“I am not sure she can follow a whole film any more: her attention span is not that long,” he said sadly.
“Well, there is only one way to find out.” Hanna said and showed him her DVD collection.
“I see you only brought comedies and happy movies?” he said flicking through the wallet of DVDs.
“Of course. I love a good cry but once I have seen Deborah Winger die from a terrible disease I don’t need to repeat the experience, regardless of how beautifully she acted. So I usually don’t buy sad films.”
“You can’t be continuously ha
ppy all the time, Pumpkin. That’s artificial and it can’t be good for you.”
“I know that. I am not running away from the bad but I am only actively seeking the positive. There is enough sadness in every life, no need to go looking for it.”
Hanna left him with the collection of films and went back upstairs into the guest room.
Biddy was quite confused when she woke up and kept asking what had happened to her knee and elbow. Walter tried to explain to her that she had fallen but she was adamant that she had not. Gradually she lost interest in the conversation and began moving about and searching the rooms on the ground floor.
“Are you looking for something?” Walter asked.
“Yes. There was somebody here. I know it. Right here they were; where have they gone? I must find them. Have you seen them?”
“Yes, Hanna is upstairs. You remember that she was here?”
“I don’t know who you are talking about,” she said dismissively and kept looking and searching behind doors.
“Your daughter Hanna came this morning,” Walter repeated but his wife seemed to become only more confused and shook her head.
“No, they were here. Here in this house. Don’t you understand me?” she said full of despair and close to tears. “I must find them. I can’t leave them alone.”
“I know who you mean, but they are asleep upstairs. They will come down very soon. I promise.”
“You know?” she asked hopeful. “Upstairs and asleep?”
“Yes,” Walter reassured her. “Upstairs and asleep.”
“Oh, good,” she sighed and at last smiled again.
“Would you like to go for a walk? Do you think you can try or does your knee still hurt?” he asked her.
Time to Let Go Page 6
