Time to Let Go

by Christoph Fischer

  The interior was very modern and minimalist, cream walls and wooden floorboards. Karim led Hanna into the kitchen.

  “This house is amazing,” Hanna said. “It could be featured on TV or in magazines. It is spotless.”

  “To you and me it is. I agree it is impressive, but it costs them an arm and a leg. Shahnaz has just started working freelance as an accountant again. Her husband’s company is not doing as well in the recession as it used to and they need a second income to keep the house. Having mother here is very hard for her. You know, keeping on top of the house, the children and her work.”

  “Well, at least she has you and your brother to help out,” Hanna said.

  They sat down at a large, oak kitchen table and Karim handed her a two page document.

  “I’ve brought my airline manuals so that you can look at the company’s guidelines on resuscitation,” Hanna said.

  Karim flicked through the manuals while she read his summary. He had managed to come up with many good points, the document was written in concise medical jargon and made each point in calm and sober statements. For the first time she felt truly that she was not guilty.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Karim. This will be a big help for me,” she acknowledged.

  “Not that you should need it, I hasten to add. You did nothing wrong, which should be pretty evident, in any case.”

  Hanna gave him a brief hug and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Thank you!”

  Karim quickly withdrew from her and looked away.

  “Would you care to meet my mother? She loves visitors, whoever they are and however briefly they stay. If you are half as good with her as you are with your own mother it will make her day,” Karim told her.

  “Of course, I would love to.”

  “Her room is on the first floor. She wanted to be in the centre of everything. She does not want privacy and quiet, she wants to hear the family so she does not feel so alone. They put her next to the master bathroom above the living room and on the same corridor as the boys. That is where she wanted to be. It is not what we would recommend for a stroke patient, but if you believe in mind over matter you will understand why we did it.”

  When they got upstairs they found his mother fast asleep. Hanna had expected a fragile little woman dressed in black, with a leathered face, grey hair and worn out from the dramas of her escape from Iran, and from the hardships of her life. Instead, the woman looked more like Jackie Onassis in her fifties, with immaculately styled hair, carefully applied make up and a beautiful complexion.

  “She has kept herself young and presentable,” Hanna stated the obvious.

  “That is my sister’s doing” Karim explained. “Shahnaz does not do anything by half. Now that she has mother with her she makes sure she gets time with her every morning to doll her up. It seems unnecessary and my mother always tells her to leave it and turn her attention to more pressing matters, but I am sure she secretly likes it. Mother used to be a very elegant lady.”

  “She still is!” Hanna corrected him.

  “Mother used to be someone in Iran until the regime change. She lived a sophisticated life and was respected by many. She is not after privileges or special treatment, but she often feels that even after 30 years here she is still not treated as an equal,” Karim whispered.

  They left the sleeping patient in her room and went downstairs.

  “Do you think she is being treated as an equal?” Hanna asked on the way down.

  “Yes, of course she is, at least most of the time. Where we live and in the circles we move there really are no such issues. Everyone I know has unpleasant moments in their lives. We all do. My mother is just overly sensitive sometimes and if someone is rude she instantly thinks it is because she is foreign looking.”

  “What does she do all day? Can she move at all?” Hanna wondered.

  “One body half has recovered most of its mobility, so she can operate a remote control and the hi-fi. Reading is a bit more difficult so we have bought her a lot of audio books and DVDs. She loves the radio: she never misses an episode of The Archers,” Karim told her.

  “I look forward to meeting her properly when she is awake,” Hanna said, making her way to the front door.

  “Great. Well, it was nice seeing you. Give me a call sometime to let me know how you get on,” Karim said, opening the door for her.

  “I promise I will,” she said quickly.

  At home Walter was torn as to how to make the best use of his time. He looked through the living room window onto the garden. He really should get the place ready for winter but the chronicle tempted him, too. He had to take every opportunity to make sure the right information was passed on. The gardener could help outside, but only Walter could help with that other wilderness. He looked over at Biddy, who was sound asleep on the sofa, and decided to stay here with her and work on the chronicle.

  What his daughter had said about him changing and evolving was still on his mind. The same could be said about everyone and most importantly about Biddy. It was horrible to think that his wife should be remembered in her current state. This new version of her had begun to dominate everyone’s image of Biddy. The picture of the capable, energetic and warm person he had married was being distorted bit by bit by memories of a confused, helpless and sometimes angry old woman. Walter had already written a large chapter on his wife which honoured her entire life and he had sworn to himself that it would not end with a sad note on her illness. He might include the few pictures they had taken, to illustrate her cheerful and happy ways beyond what a chronicle could express.

  He remembered a discussion he had had with Henrik about the matter of ‘selling’ family secrets. But Walter wanted the world to know and hated to ‘compromise the truth’ by telling only the good parts. He decided to stick with the concept of a shorter official version and to expand everything privately at a later stage by adding his confidential notes. For now he had to press on.

  It was time to come to another black sheep in the family: his aunt Helvi.

  Helvi had been the most promising star of the Korhonen family. Her father had high hopes for her in terms of marriage or a professional career. Exceedingly intelligent and one of the first women to be admitted to university she inexplicably – allegedly - dropped out of her education and eloped with a Communist to Spain, where they fought on the side of the rebels – in line with the family’s political tradition. She returned to the family home as a pregnant widow after only a few months. She stayed at home while her mother went out to work to support the family but later she trained as a nurse and earned wages herself. Like Kari, she had taken to the bottle, never having recovered from her broken heart. He would have liked to describe her only vaguely as a troubled woman, but then too much information would be lost that he found very interesting and that should also fascinate future generations. Yet, he did not want to give the impression that the entire family had been a bunch of drunks and mad people.

  Blonde with blue eyes she should have had plenty of suitors, even as the ‘fallen woman’ that she was in her family’s eyes, but she seemed to have lost interest and never agreed to go out with the few men who dared to ask the unapproachable mother.

  Walter had to rely on anecdotal evidence and had to deal with several versions that contradicted each other. According to the sources she had either been reading medicine in Oxford, mathematics in London, or biology somewhere else. Henrik had promised his father to contact the universities and find out where Helvi had been registered, but so far he had not come back with results.

  Helvi Harper, nee Korhonen

  Born 01.07.1910 in Helsinki

  Married 03.07.1936 in Barcelona to William Harper, born 07.09.1907, died 19.07.1936 in Barcelona

  Child: Jaana Harper, born 12.01.1937, died 13.02.1941 in London, cause unknown

  Enrolled in unknown university, no degree

  Never remarried

  Occupation: nurse

  In his conf
idential notes Walter wrote that he had once overheard a discussion between his parents about Helvi’s aborted career, and believed to remember that it was maths she had been studying, but he had been very young and could be wrong about it. Many years later Kari had boasted about his intelligent sister who would have been a doctor but who was to say that his unreliable uncle had not been misled by Helvi’s later profession as a nurse.

  The wall of silence, with regards to the dead child, incited the wildest fantasies in the young Walter and even now he could not shake off the suspicion that there was more to the story than was being let on.

  He could describe in detail how Helvi spent her days, her habits and her closed off personality, but was it ethical to publish that kind of information?

  As he wrote the uncensored version of Helvi’s life with all the stories and versions that he had ever heard, he tried to be very careful in his wording, to keep as ‘scientific’ in this unscientific part of his work as he possibly could.

  He only wished someone of the older generation had been so far sighted and compiled a similar chronicle for him. By the time Walter had been old enough to learn the family secrets of the grown-ups the Korhonen family seemed to have stopped speaking about the things that mattered to each other.

  Biddy woke up before Walter had finished writing this latest article: time passed quickly when he wrote. He took her to the kitchen and made some tea. She was not yet fully alert and without saying anything she just sat at the table and stared into space.

  Walter got the ironing board out and a basket full of clean clothes from the utility room but before he had managed even to start on the first shirt Biddy stood up and took over from him. He kept a close eye on her to make sure she did not set anything on fire, but he let her carry on. Her continuous commitment to housework was remarkable and had made it difficult to use a ‘home help’. He had tried it once, hiring a woman to clean the house but Biddy had not liked her and so he was stuck with either doing most of the dreaded tasks himself, or ‘managing’ his wife while she did them. He was quite pleased she had taken over the ironing; it was the task above all that he really hated doing, even though it was almost just as demanding to supervise.

  Fortunately, the ‘babysitting’ was cut short by Hanna’s arrival. As soon as her daughter entered the living room Biddy forgot all about the ironing and Walter quietly unplugged the iron and put it safely back in the utility room.

  Biddy was all excited when Hanna started to unload food from the larder and the fridge in preparation for dinner, but Walter was irritated. As soon as something was put out Biddy would examine it and then she started to put things away again, making comments like: “I won’t eat that,” or “We don’t need that, do we?”

  Hanna had to be on the ball to keep track of the things that were put away and where they disappeared to. Walter left the kitchen because it was all far too irritating: his patience was running out. As he stood in the door he turned around.

  “Hanna if it fits with your plans I thought I might actually go to the pub tonight. It being a Saturday and all, would you mind?”

  “Not at all. I was going to stay in with mother anyway. I thought we might watch a few more DVDs. The ones I had in mind won’t be your cup of tea, so it’s just as well if you’re not here. Are you meeting any of your friends?”

  “No, I am thinking of going to the sports pub to see what they’ve got on; just for a change of scenery.”

  “You should call one of your friends to go along with you. You can’t go to a pub alone. That is sad.”

  “I couldn’t care less if I am alone, Pumpkin, or what it looks like. Most of our friends are not doing evening things any more. They are either dead, in a home or they don’t want to leave their house. Anyway, I appreciate it Pumpkin. I will be back long before you go to bed,” Walter promised.

  After dinner he went upstairs into the bedroom to change into something more presentable while Hanna set up the DVD player in the living room and went through the collection of films. Biddy did not recognise any of them so it was up to the daughter to make a choice. She settled for an easy option, ‘Mamma Mia’. More music and light hearted entertainment – the two of them were set for the evening until it was bed time.

  Biddy liked it but could not quite follow the story.

  “Who is he now? He was not there before.” she asked.

  “That is the other man from her past,” Hanna explained. “There are three.”

  “Three men,” Biddy giggled. “Well, I never. And who is he?”

  “He is the boyfriend of the daughter,” Hanna said.

  “But not from the past?”

  “Right. He has nothing to do with Meryl Streep. He goes out with the daughter.”

  “And who is he?”

  “He used to go out with…,” Hanna began but a song started and Biddy sang along to the music and slapped her thigh.

  Not only did she recognise the tune, she knew the lyrics too.

  Hanna found it quite astonishing to see what could be ingrained into the mind and subconscious. Biddy could not remember names and places in her own house but she could still sing those Abba songs, and within her life span they had come relatively late. The mother had only been exposed to the music through her children, yet some of it had managed to survive as memory after all.

  For Hanna this was another sign of the dedication Biddy had shown to her children and how much interest she had taken in their lives. She felt the need to hold her mother’s hand and grabbed it. The hand responded and squeezed hers back, but when the music started again they moved and waved along to the rhythm of the next song.

  As soon as her father had left the house, Hanna went to get some sweets from her room. Ever since a science magazine had talked about a link between Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes, her father had restricted the chocolate and sugar allowed in the house. Hanna agreed that it could do no harm to cut back on those items but she wanted some comfort food today and she also thought that her mother deserved a special treat now and again. Walter would never know.

  Biddy fell asleep soon enough, even before the film was over. Hanna found her a blanket and decided to leave her to sleep on the sofa for a while: Biddy looked so peaceful and happy. It was nice just to sit here with her mother, a treasured moment of stability, even if only imagined.

  For some reason, being back at her family home made her feel quite peculiar this time. Without the punishing schedule of airline travel she was lost. With no knowledge where her next trip would be going, and if, or when, she would be flying again, her stay here seemed somehow much more real than her previous visits had been. She felt suddenly trapped in an old life but also a part of this family again: her only family.

  She let her mind drift back to the past, a past that had been safe and protected by being in a family. The longest she had dated anyone was two years. Dominic wanted her to give up her career because he missed her too much. He was notoriously jealous and offered her a position in his father’s insurance business. When she declined the offer and pointed out how much she loved her job, he accused her of cheating and soon broke off with her.

  Before that she went out with Daniel, an accountant who felt so extremely lucky to be dating a ‘hot looking stewardess’ such as her that he too developed excessive jealousy and paranoia.

  Was her father correct in accusing her of having no staying power and being too flighty, or was there such a thing as being unlucky in love?

  Her friend Chris, a hobby psychologist, maintained the theory that Hanna was choosing guys who wanted her to change because she wanted to change, and that she was using these men as catalysts, only to get cold feet and run away from them.

  Hanna could not see a pattern in her relationships herself but right now it did not matter. Sitting here with her mother was all she needed.

  Chapter 13: Walter’s Night Out

  The time Walter had taken for his grooming and the choice of clothes might have made anyone think he was goin
g on a date. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Throughout all of his married life he was too much in love with his wife to have been tempted to be unfaithful. Of course, there had been attractive women but to actually go ahead and do something about it remained too big a step to take. He was not sure if it was his upbringing that had equipped him with high moral values, or the amount of exercise that provided him with enough endorphins and hormone rushes to not crave that kick, which other men seemed to need at various crisis points in their married lives.

  Tonight he had no intention of meeting a woman or even look. The attention to his appearance was merely a ritual, to mark the occasion of a night out by himself. Early on in their married life, Biddy had often told him off for not making an effort when they were invited out to see friends, and over the years the nagging had become so ingrained that he started to hear it in his head whenever he was getting ready to go out.

  At the last minute he decided he wouldn’t drink, and so he got into his old Volvo and drove to a pub across town which had a huge TV screen.

  The pub was busy with young people and he felt a little out of place, but at the same time he enjoyed losing himself in the crowd. The main screen showed an interview with players and managers, it was still too early for the main games to have started. Arsenal were not playing until tomorrow so there wouldn’t be a game on that interested him, but there was a repeat of a classic match showing in the smaller room at the back that took his fancy. While he ordered his orange spritzer he could hear the summary of today’s games and the consequent movements on the league table. The show did nothing for him, the commentators were stating the obvious as if he and all the other dedicated fans who were watching the sports show on a Saturday night didn’t already know the meaning of the results.

  Sports news reports were only exciting for him if they concerned the results of International Tournaments and the Cup games or perhaps during the transfer window when players were sold like cattle from one club to the other. He resented the cult around individual players and coaches, and did not buy into the gossip and the arguments some of those blown up ego’s had with each other. His love was for the game itself and not all the nonsense that was built around it. Yet the majority of customers in here were watching the show with fascinated excitement and surprising dedication.