by Jackie Kay
In the cottage that night, Sam made us dinner, spaghetti Bolognese, and opened a bottle of Chianti. She lit a candle. She said, ‘Look Dionne, darling, the past is past. We can’t do anything about it. I would have loved it if we had had a child together, you know that.’
‘A child together is what you wanted! You would have liked to have been able to make me pregnant!’
‘I would have. Is that a terrible thing?’
‘But you couldn’t!’
‘Thanks for that! Is that my fault?’
‘You wouldn’t agree to me getting pregnant twenty years ago when there was still time!’
‘That is not true and you know it is not true,’ Sam said, ‘I was happy for you to try with Paul. It was you who didn’t want Paul coming between us, not me. Why do you go over the past and distort things?’
‘It’s not what I remember. You didn’t want him coming between us!’
‘Well, he’s come between us and he isn’t even here,’ Sam said.
That night Sam looked over at me sitting in the armchair. ‘Dee?’ she said. ‘Come and have a cuddle.’ And I went to her and all the things in my head went quiet for a bit.
‘Shall I come in and sleep with you tonight?’
I said yes. I said yes because I wanted her to hear it, to feel it. Sam got into bed with her book and read for a bit and then put the light off. I lay very still waiting for the sounds to start, the wind chimes; the far away baby’s gurgle, the sound of the empty cot rocking back and forth, back and forth. I must have fallen asleep. I woke up to the sound of a car in the drive, and then I drifted off again. It was some way into the night before I heard it. I got up and looked in the cot and there was nothing there except the blue blanket had been unwrapped and was not now folded into a square. I shook Sam awake. ‘Sam, there is somebody else here,’ I said. ‘Sam!’ She woke up and rubbed her eyes. ‘What now?’ she said. ‘What is it?’ She got up and looked in the cot. ‘I’ve seen it all now,’ she said. ‘You moved that earlier today, didn’t you, and now you’re pretending somebody else has done it?’
‘I didn’t touch it,’ I said. ‘I swear I didn’t touch it. I swear on my own life.’
‘Well, I bloody well didn’t touch it,’ Sam said. But there was something in her voice, a belligerence, something a little odd. ‘Only you know what you are capable of,’ I said and climbed back into bed, and put out my bedside light. I squeezed my eyes shut and lay still waiting to see what she would do next when she thought I had fallen asleep. I had terrible pains in my stomach. After years of being regular as clockwork, it was now difficult to predict.
It must have been sometime later; perhaps two or even three hours later, when I saw Sam tiptoe to the cot. She stood looking over it for quite a while. Then she left the room. Not long after that I heard the sound of the wind chimes and the baby gurgling and I sat bolt upright. I was clammy with fear. Not just a hot flush but the sweat of sheer terror. I got out of bed and crept across the floor as quietly as I could. I peered into the cot. The pink blanket was now unfolded and lying on top of the blue one and the cot was rocking, back and forth, back and forth, with some momentum, and Sam was nowhere in the room. I put my hand to the side of the cot to still it, to stop the rocking and when I looked inside again I saw that the blankets had rolled up into the shape of a small baby and I touched the back and said, there, there. Sam came down the stairs and stood beside me in the semi-dark. She touched my back. She whispered, ‘Back to your bed, darling, it’s very late.’
The next day, Sam drove me into Bath and we had a bowl of soup in a delicatessen and bought some things for supper, some cheeses, some olives, some salami and bread. ‘You look pale,’ Sam said over lunch, sipping her strong coffee. ‘I so wanted this break to do you good.’
‘It is doing me good,’ I said and I meant it. I couldn’t wait for the night. I’d started not to dread it but to anticipate it, to look forward to it. There was nothing to be frightened of. In the evening we watched a film; a favourite of ours, An Imitation of Life. We both wept, as usual, at the end. And again Sam said, ‘If you don’t mind, my love, I’m going to have to sleep in the other room again. I find all your night-time restlessness a bit exhausting. I’ll be back to work soon and I won’t feel rested at all. ’
‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘More room for me to stretch out.’ That night I didn’t lie down. I lay sitting up in bed. I felt a loose feeling and then a letting go. When I got up, the bed sheets were soaked in blood. So much blood, I stared at it appalled as if it was the scene a crime I had committed and couldn’t remember. I pulled the sheet off and padded into the bathroom in the dark. I put the sodden sheet in the sink and rinsed it over and over again with cold water. The blood stain wouldn’t budge. I found some bleach under the sink and put some of that in. Then I took the whole dripping sheet into the kitchen and put it in the washing machine. I went about the house quietly looking for the airing cupboard trying to remember where I’d seen spare sheets. Finally, I found a fresh one in the bathroom cupboard upstairs. I could hear voices in the other bedroom. I could hear laughing and giggling.
I went downstairs to my bedroom again, and switched on the bedside lamp. I couldn’t stop crying. I’d lost so much blood, I felt weak. I tried to put the fresh sheet on. It seemed the most difficult task; every time I got it on one corner, it popped off the other. I stared at the cot. The folded blankets were not folded and the little pillow was curled up under them in the shape of a baby. Up the stairs the wind chimes started and the faint sound of the baby’s gurgle, then the giggle, then the cot started rocking again, back and forth, and back and forth. I got up and pulled the rocking horse against the door. I pulled two chairs into the room and put them against the door too. I lifted her out of the cot and rocked her in my arms. I started singing softly at first, Summer time and the living is easy, fish are jumping and the cotton is high. Your daddy’s rich and your momma’s good-looking, so hush little baby, don’t you cry. There was a pounding on the door. ‘Dionne! Open the door! Open the door now!’ ‘I can’t, darling,’ I whispered. ‘I’m needed here.’ Sam pushed against the door and knocked over the horse and the chairs. She stared at me. She said, ‘What on earth are you playing at?’ ‘What are you playing at?’ I said. ‘Well, it’s all out now. And I’m getting out. We’re going to live on our own, aren’t we?’ I said to the baby. Sam stared at me and looked as if she was going to faint. ‘You’re looking very pale,’ I said to Sam.
Mind Away
‘What was it? If I don’t say the minute something comes into my head, puff, it goes,’ my mother was saying to me. ‘Nope! Gone! The brain’s a sieve. Maybe not a sieve, maybe a . . . what’s the name of the thing with bigger holes?’
‘A colander?’ I said.
‘Yes, a colander, that’s it, the size of the things I’m losing.’
‘We’re all the same. I’m always forgetting where I’ve put my keys,’ I said.
‘I forget more than my keys. It’s everything. I’ll forget myself soon. I’ll forget my head even though it’s screwed on. I’ll lose myself completely.’ My mother started the handbag scramble, frantically searching for something. ‘What are you looking for?’ I asked her. ‘You’re always looking for something.’ She swung round and stared at me. ‘Have you taken it?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t act all innocent with me!’ she said, pulling things out of zipped pockets and putting them back in. It was disconcerting. I saw her take her keys out and stuff them behind a cushion on the sofa. Here we go, I said, under my breath. ‘I’m forgetting things. I’m losing things. I can almost feel them slipping away, like wee ghosts. Spuooosh, and away they go!’
The interesting thing was that my mother didn’t hold on to any emotion for too long, not even anger. She moved quickly, back and forth. I never knew what I was going to get from one minute to the other. ‘Do these wee notes to yourself you’re always writing not help?’ I asked her. ‘You know, your notes to self?’
/> ‘My lists? No! I write things down and then I forget where I’ve put my list. Did I show you the chocolates Jimmy bought me?’
‘You did, yes,’ I said, ‘kind of Jimmy. Tell me your thoughts and I’ll write them down for you. Tell me the minute they come into your head!’ I was struck by what a brilliant idea this was. But my mother was not at all keen: ‘I know your game. You’ll just be writing it all down to make a mockery out of me! Exposing me!’
‘I’m just thinking if you could catch them before you lose them you might feel better?’
‘It’s not so much that my thoughts are running away with me, more like they’ve run off with somebody else!’
‘And who would that be?’ I asked her.
‘Oooh, a young, dishy doctor,’ my mother said, without a moment’s hesitation.
‘We’ll need to do a bit of private investigating and see if we can track him down,’ I said. ‘We’ll go out later today and we’ll track this doctor down.’ My mother giggled, clearly delighted. I put a clean piece of A4 paper in my old Olivetti and typed Doctor runs off with an old woman’s thoughts. I poured myself a small malt: a childhood smell from the pine woods, a wood smoke fire outside, a black stick of liquorice. I think I could smell the smell I used to smell on holidays in Yell, a smell of peat bog. I remember my mother and me in the Windy Dog Café eating soup, not that long before she lost her marbles.
‘Here you!’ my mother said. ‘Is it not a bit early for the whisky? It’s light out there.’ Strange how some things still didn’t get past her. ‘I’m forty-four!’ I said. ‘It’s cold outside, nothing like a wee nip to warm you up. Besides, all private investigators keep a bottle of Scotch in their seedy offices!’ My mother’s eyes shone. ‘This is the best idea you’ve had in a long time!’ she beamed. ‘What would we call ourselves?’ ‘Nora and Mary?’ I said. ‘What are you saying?’ my mother said irritably. ‘What we’d call ourselves,’ I said. ‘Or maybe surnames are better for detectives, maybe Gourdie and Gourdie, how about that?’ My mother looked at me blankly. I’d lost her. No one in! But two minutes later she was back again, surprising me. ‘I’m certain he’ll be an NHS man. He’ll not be a BUPA doctor! Not in a million years! Come on, Nora Gourdie,’ she said to herself, trying to put her tights on, rolling them over her fist and aiming her flesh foot into the foot of her opaque tights with reinforced toes. I kept typing away; it was the only thing that stopped my migraine, paradoxically, the sound of typing. Sometimes, I’d find myself typing a sentence that would surprise me: ‘I’ve lost the will to live,’ he said.
Doctor Mahmud was sitting in his surgery with a patient, Peter Henderson, when Doctor Mahmud suddenly said, ‘I’m finding I don’t like wearing tights any more. It’s a hassle pulling them up and over my ankles, my knees. I’m that exhausted when I’ve hoisted them over my knickers that I’ve lost the will to live. Time Sheer and I parted company!’
‘Excuse me, Doctor?’ Peter said. Doctor Mahmud had just finished writing a prescription in his rather erratic and mostly illegible handwriting. Peter Henderson was fifty-six, and had been told his cholesterol was sky high and he would need to start taking cholesterol pills and cut down on certain foods. Peter was feeling morose, and a little jumpy. ‘Sorry?’ Peter said. ‘What were you saying?’ But the doctor stared at him blankly as if he hadn’t said a thing. Just being in the doctor’s surgery reminded Peter that he was going to die. All right, not for a while yet, but it was going to happen. It wasn’t kidding on, death. It would come for him, like it had come for his mother, his wife, his old pal Duncan.
Doctor Mahmud was a handsome big bugger, slim, fit, sympathetic, usually. Peter Henderson was hefty; he barely fitted into the patient’s seat. He perched on the end of it and waited for the doctor to speak. He sat with his legs splayed open because they were too fat to close. He’d been brought up to revere a doctor. The thing about this cholesterol was that you couldn’t eat any of your favourite things any more, which made you wonder not if life was worth living exactly, but if life was rich enough to live, if it had enough flavour. What was the point in going through the motions of life without deep-fried Mars Bars, bloody steaks, streaky bacon and eggs, a poke of chips and curry sauce? The future was oily fish, spinach, rocket, watercress, Christ! ‘It’s all about unsaturated fat,’ Doctor Mahmud said. ‘I’ll Google fat when I get home the night,’ Peter said, in a thin voice. ‘No. Google makes people paranoid. Too much information! Stay away from Google!’ ‘Right,’ Peter laughed a little nervously. What was it with the doctor today? Was he just going off on one? ‘There’s really nothing to worry about,’ the doctor said, frowning. ‘We’ll do another blood test in six weeks to measure your levels again.’
‘Thank you, Doctor. Will the pills have any side effects?’ Peter asked, staring at the weighing scales in the surgery, and feeling a moment’s relief that he hadn’t been asked to stand on them. ‘No, you won’t notice anything. There are people with worse problems. Cholesterol? Many people have high cholesterol. Eh? We’re living in the age of cholesterol. This is not the age of Aquarius!’ Peter laughed, not his usual big booming laugh, but a little squeaky, eee hee hee. His beer belly hung over his trousers. Little beads of sweat assembled on his forehead. He was just about to lumber himself out of the seat when the good doctor suddenly shouted: ‘The snags, the rips, the ladders! Why did any of us bother? Why didn’t we wear trousers years ago? Knee-highs, that’s what I need, a thin pair of knee-high socks! That would sort me out.’ ‘Excuse me?’ Peter said again to the doctor, thinking perhaps there was also something going wrong with his hearing. These days when Peter watched the television, particularly soaps, he heard a small voice underneath the actors whispering stage instructions. Maria closes the door and walks to Underworld, the knicker factory. The doctor’s white coat, his stethoscope, his blood-pressure pump, his neat desk, all of that was the same as usual, but what was happening to the doctor’s conversation?
Peter looked at the people in the waiting room. Little do you know what you’re in for, he thought, looking at the anxious young mum with her snotty-nosed baby. He popped his head through the reception hatch. ‘Doctor Mahmud says another appointment in six weeks?’ the receptionist said. Peter nodded and sighed, a single tear trickled down his ruddy cheek. He picked up his prescription and exited the surgery so fast he was sure that he could feel his cholesterol level hitting the sky.
Alone in his surgery, Doctor Mahmud washed his hands with surgical cleaner at the small, low sink in the corner of the room. He dried them on a paper towel and looked in the mirror. His hair was neat enough; his small beard was well trimmed; his eyes were a little dark underneath. He was trying to think when it first started. There was nothing in any of his symptoms that he recognized. He was thirty-three years old, and was enjoying being part of Springfield Practice. He worked alongside two brilliant doctors. (Though Mahmud would have to admit – if pushed – that he was the most popular of the three; patients clamoured to see him.) If it happened again, he’d have to go and see somebody.
‘Mary, do you think,’ my mother was saying to me, ‘that if I found the right doctor, I’d get my train of thoughts back?’
‘I hope so, Mother!’ I said.
‘You gotta hope!’ my mother said, bursting into song. ‘You’ve gotta live a little, love a little, make your poor heart . . . a little, that’s the story of, that’s the glory of love. You gotta hope!’
‘Hope’s our only hope, Mother,’ I said and knocked back a little more whisky.
‘Whisky is not hope!’ my mother said, her beady, demented eyes still taking in my wee dram.
‘Maybe not, but it’s full of character,’ I said.
‘Pass me the Yellow Pages!’ my mother said, impatient and somehow suddenly authoritative.
‘Where there’s life, there’s hope,’ I said.
‘There’s life in the old dog yet,’ my mother said.
‘Who was your favourite dog of ours?’ I asked her. She seemed to have no trouble r
emembering the past.
‘Dinky!’ she said instantly. ‘Do you remember dear Dinky, those serious eyes, that sad-looking face? Remember how she’d eat the post? Love letters were always arriving with bite marks in them.’
‘What love letters?’ I said. My mother started up the handbag scramble again, frantic, distressed. She found a lipstick in the bag, and slashed it inaccurately across her lips. I got up from the typewriter, took the lipstick out her hand, wiped it off and reapplied it. ‘Then there was Gatsby! Remember Gatsby?’ my mother said. ‘Remember the Gatsby era? That time he fell off the wall into all that mud. I could measure my whole life in dogs!’
‘Gatsby wasn’t that long ago,’ I said. ‘Gatsby just died last year.’
‘Did he?’ my mother said. ‘Very sad.’
‘It’s a dog’s life!’ I said. ‘Remember how you could never throw away the leads of our dead dogs? They’d still hang up on the hook on the kitchen door?’ I said. ‘No point chucking out a good lead.’ My mother chuckled. Word association, I thought to myself. She can do word association. The migraine was on its way out, hopefully, though I still felt a little queasy; perhaps the whisky would settle my stomach.
‘Who thought up the name Gatsby? Remember Gatsby. Gatsby was a Dalmatian. I used to have a beautiful black and white polka-dot dress exactly like that dog’s spots. Your mother was a snazzy dresser!’
‘I remember. You still are. You’re trendy. You wouldn’t be seen dead in a twinset!’
