Will You Remember Me?

by Amanda Prowse

  ‘Is it ever painful?’

  ‘It can be.’ She answered without hesitation. ‘I’ve had one or two that have fought it until their last breath and their struggles were humbling and sad. So I guess it depends.’ She straightened the chart. ‘But usually it’s not like that. We have medication, similar to what you are on at the moment, that takes the pain away.’

  ‘Do some people ever forget who they are or who they are with?’ This was Poppy’s greatest fear, from what had happened to her nan.

  ‘Yes. But those people are usually elderly and in the grip of dementia.’

  Poppy nodded, comforted to hear that. ‘Does it make you sad?’ She looked up, tying to gauge Barbara’s response.

  The nurse paused. ‘Sometimes, yes. It’s hard dealing with kids and people you get close to, obviously. But the one thing I’ve learnt working here, seeing death very regularly, is that life goes on. We are all here for a short time and then we die. It’s just what happens. Life goes on.’

  ‘That’s what my nan said to me.’

  ‘She was right. Nans usually are.’ Barbara smiled.

  ‘It’s very odd, being this ill. I can’t remember what I thought about before. It was the same when I fell in love and then had my kids – I couldn’t imagine not having a head full of him and them. The three of them sit behind every blink of my eyelids, imprinted there like tiny ghosts, living in my mind. And now this has taken over from them and I think about this bloody illness every second of every day; there’s not a single chance to forget.’

  ‘I think that’s just how it is. They say it’s a battle and it seems they’re right. It must be exhausting.’ Barbara pulled the top cover taut over Poppy’s legs.

  ‘It is.’ Poppy sighed. ‘I feel too old and too young both at the same time. I’m only thirty-two, for God’s sake, way too young for this, surely? I know when you’re really young, in your teens, you think thirty-two is ancient – like my friend Jenna’s mum used to seem to me, when she was this age. I remember she had tiny lines at the top of her mouth, from her constant drawing on a fag, and no sparkle in her eyes, and she seemed really old to me. But that’s not old, is it? Thirty-two – it’s no age at all. They’ll be saying that, once I’ve gone: “Oh, she was no age at all…”’ Poppy gave a small laugh. ‘Gone where, though? Where will I have gone? Isn’t that the million-dollar question. And, come to think of it, why not the million-pound question—’

  ‘I think you might be thinking a bit too much.’ Barbara patted Poppy’s pillow into a fat square and propped it behind her. ‘Try and let your mind go blank.’ She smiled and left Poppy alone to gaze at Max’s artwork on the wall.

  Poppy must have dozed again because the next thing she was aware of was Martin’s voice.

  ‘Gawd, we’ve got some weather going on out there tonight, girl. I got drenched just coming from the car park and it’s hitting the pavements like bullets. Half the dirt has come out of your tubs, like someone’s had a hose in there. Never seen rain like it. Still, on the plus side, it’s given the car a good clean, that’s saved me a fiver up the car wash.’

  Poppy listened. She could tell he was nervous and upset, trying to mask his emotions with chatter.

  ‘Funny isn’t it, how every time we get severe weather, the newspapers go into overdrive. It’s always the worst we’ve ever had! Imagine what we’d do if we didn’t have the weather to talk about or moan about. Every queue in every supermarket would be silent.’ His voice dropped and slowed. ‘I went to the supermarket today. Walked around a bit with me trolley. I stood in front of the cereal for ages, Pop, looking at all the boxes…’ Poppy heard a wobble in his tone, then a gulp. ‘And I reached out for that muesli you like and it was as if I was frozen. I knew you… wouldn’t be eating it, and that… that cut me in two, Poppy. The thought of not buying your cereal.’ Another gulp. ‘I left the trolley in the aisle and came home.’

  He let out a deep sigh.

  ‘Are you awake?’ he whispered into the half-light.

  She chose to stay still, lying on her side, wanting the comfort of him but lacking the energy to sit up, smile, engage.

  She heard him sigh again as the plastic cushioned seat cracked and dimpled under his weight.

  ‘Kids are soundo; I tucked them up before I left and Claudia was cleaning the kitchen. She is keeping the place immaculate – I think even you’d approve. She cleans 24/7. I think it keeps her mind off other things. Maxy ate a good tea. He had fish fingers and peas but then abandoned them when he saw the yoghurts. My mistake, I forgot what you said and let him see them! But then when he’d finished his yoghurt he went back to his peas. He makes me laugh. Peg’s quiet, same really. I had a crap journey in, did I say? It’s pissing down. The world and his wife are tootling along the lanes and no one seemed to be in any hurry except for me. Always the way, isn’t it?’

  She felt the weight of his palm as he stroked her back through the thin cotton nightgown.

  ‘I was thinking on the way in, I wish I had been able to get you a real diamond the size of an ice cube and a kidney-shaped swimming pool. You’ve never wanted much, not like other women. No designer handbags or fancy gear. Mind you, that was probably a good bloody job on my crappy salary. You never wanted anything for yourself, did you? It would have been nice for me to be able to do that for you. I’m sorry.’

  Poppy turned onto her back and opened her eyes. ‘I was only ever joking.’ Her voice was thin, reedy, her breathing laboured.

  ‘Yeah, you say that…’ He gathered up her fingers and kissed her knuckles, holding her hand against his mouth.

  Poppy gave a small nod. ‘Only ever needed you and the kids, no diamonds.’

  ‘Good job, innit, Poppy Day?’

  Poppy nodded again. ‘Did you say it’s raining?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely larruping it down.’

  ‘Can you open the curtains?’ Poppy pulled herself up as far as she was able; she wanted to see the rain against the window.

  Martin stood and pulled the outer curtains and ran the nets along their wire to reveal the water trickling in tiny rivers from the top of the pane to the bottom.

  ‘Take me dancing in it, Mart…’

  ‘What?’ He took a step closer to her bed, to better hear.

  ‘Take me dancing in the rain!’ She beamed at him from beneath the sheet.

  ‘I can’t! You’ll catch your death of cold, you’re not well!’

  Poppy laughed. ‘I’m not well? Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed!’ she croaked. ‘What does it matter if I catch a bad cold, what does it matter now? Please…’

  Martin exhaled through bloated cheeks. He looked from the window to his wife. She seemed so frail, her skin almost translucent where the light touched it.

  ‘Oh, what the hell! Come on then.’ He pulled back the blanket and sheets, shocked, as he always was these days, by the withered state of his wife’s body. He unhooked her drip from its stand and gave it to her to hold. Then he fetched her coat from the wardrobe and slipped her thin arms into it before securing her scarf around her neck.

  ‘I’ll carry you.’

  Poppy nodded her approval.

  Martin bent down and scooped his wife into his arms like he was lifting one of the kids to bed from the car after a long journey. He didn’t comment on how light she felt in his arms or the way her hip bones dug into his stomach, sharp and painful. Poppy curled her head under his chin and he kissed her scalp as they navigated the corridor, ducking into doorways and making sure they weren’t seen as they made their way across the foyer.

  ‘I haven’t had this much fun since I shoplifted as a kid!’ He laughed.

  ‘Naughty boy,’ she whispered.

  ‘I might have been, if you hadn’t kept me on the straight and narrow.’

  Martin stood under the glass-canopied entrance with his wife in his arms. ‘Listen to the rain on the roof, it’s bucketing down. Are you sure you want to do this?’

  Poppy nodded against him and wriggled for him to lo
wer her to the floor. He gently moved his arms and bent over until her feet, in their thick woolly socks, rested on his shoes. With one arm clamped across her back, holding her fast as she balanced on his shoes, he lifted her slowly and inched forward, until they stood outside in the rain.

  Poppy looked skywards and let the deluge drench her hair and skin. She stretched her arm out at an angle and Martin gripped it, locking their hands together. Slowly they began to waltz. Right there in the car park. As Martin grew more comfortable, he sped up. They giggled as they twirled and spun while the rain came down. He twisted her in gentle circles, watching as the droplets sat on her eyelashes and dripped from her nose. Poppy threw her head back and laughed as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  Changing direction, he swooped to left and right, pulling her with him and against him, a willing partner as they slipped across the shiny tarmac under the night sky. The rain ricocheted off the ground and sparkled in the spotlights, sending silver shards of light where their feet danced. Poppy’s nightdress clung to her thin frame beneath her coat and Martin felt the weight of his waterlogged jumper and jacket.

  Soaked and breathless, Martin stopped moving and pulled his wife into him. ‘Listen to the rain hitting the roof and the cars, it sounds like clapping! That’s applause for you, my girl; my beautiful dancing partner.’

  ‘It’s the dance of my life.’ Poppy smiled against his chin.

  Wiping the hair from her face, he kissed her full on the mouth. ‘I bloody love you, Poppy Day! I always have and I always will.’

  Poppy kissed him back, a proper kiss that each would savour for the rest of their lives.

  Twenty-Nine

  Martin woke from his brief nap in the chair by the side of her bed. His two-day-old beard was itchy and uncomfortable, but he was not going to leave her, not for one second. She was asleep more than she was awake, but there would be plenty of time for showering and shaving, after. After. He could not bear to think of it.

  ‘How’s she doing?’

  Martin jumped. He hadn’t heard the nurse enter the room.

  He nodded. ‘Fine, same.’

  She walked to the side of Poppy’s bed and flicked the drip, delivering all that was needed to keep Poppy calm and pain-free. She bent low and seemed to be examining Poppy’s face. Her breath was rattly, each exhalation a wheezing chore.

  ‘She seems quite peaceful. I don’t think too much longer.’ She smiled at him before she left the room, shutting the door slowly, almost reverently.

  Martin hated the sense of relief he felt at hearing those words, wanting to stop time and spend eternity in her company and yet also wanting it to be over for all their sakes.

  The tick of the clock seemed extraordinarily loud. He wished he could stop it.

  He sat on the edge of his chair and smoothed the hair from his wife’s forehead, stroking the paper-thin skin stretched over her jutting cheekbones. Her breath was sickly sweet and the whites of her eyes were sallow.

  He whispered to his wife, ‘I was just thinking, Poppy, about when we were at school. You walked past me in the dinner hall and you said, “You make me feel very safe.” Do you remember? God, I thought I might burst. It was as if you’d given me the moon in a box, something so wonderful, I felt ten feet tall.’ He paused, smiling at the memory, at the way she had shaken her fringe from her eyes and wrinkled her nose, just like Peg. ‘Those words changed things for me. I figured that if I made someone as smart and beautiful as you feel safe, then I wasn’t the useless little poof my old man told me I was. I shan’t ever forget it.’

  Poppy murmured something.

  He bent low towards her and placed his ear next to her mouth so he could hear her words.

  ‘I’m not ready… Mart…’ she whispered.

  ‘Ssshh… Ssshh… It’s okay. I’ve got you, Poppy Day.’ He slid his arm under her back and lay next to her on the bed, cradling her fragile form against his own, holding her fast inside his strong arms, right where she belonged. With his free hand, he smoothed her thin hair against her clammy scalp. ‘I’ve got you, darling.’

  ‘Don’t let me go.’ Her voice was a croaky whisper and each breath rattled against his chest. He fought the urge to cough on her behalf, not wanting to trigger a coughing fit in her, worried she might not recover from the effort.

  ‘I’ll never let you go. We’re joined together, aren’t we? You’re my girl. Remember what I told you when we were little?’

  Poppy found talking a struggle, but she closed her eyes and remembered his childhood words. ‘I promise you, Poppy, that I will always be your best friend. It’s like we are joined together by invisible strings that join your heart to mine, and if you need me, you just have to pull them and I’ll come to you.’ She had laughed out loud, loving the idea of their unbreakable, invisible bond. ‘And if you pull yours, I will come to you, Martin. That way, I’ll always know if you need me.’ And it had worked, even in Afghanistan – especially in Afghanistan. She mentally smiled as she remembered Miles’s amused disbelief when she’d told him that Martin was still alive. ‘Poppy, you don’t know that for sure’ ‘Oh but I do. I do know it. He pulled on my heartstrings!’

  She lifted her eyes and there was her nan, standing quietly and patiently, smiling and waiting. There was someone with her. A tall man, with dark, curly hair who stepped closer and pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. Miles… Poppy tried to lift her fingers in a small wave.

  Martin’s voice was soft now, soothing, and it screened out the beeps of the machinery and the echoey, impersonal noises of the hospice.

  ‘And you know, Poppy Day…’ Martin paused, swallowing the emotion that threatened. ‘You don’t have to be afraid, because these heartstrings last forever. They stretch all the way to heaven and back.’

  He felt the tension leave her shoulders. Her head, suddenly heavy, sank against his chest. He instinctively knew she was smiling. He smiled too and grazed her scalp with a kiss.

  ‘Heaven and back,’ she whispered. These were the last words of Poppy Day.

  Martin didn’t want to leave her. He held her tight until he felt the warmth start to slip from her body. He was vaguely aware of a nurse coming into the room and then a doctor arriving and confirming what he already knew, that he had lost his wife. As soon as the man spoke the words and filled out his form, Martin felt grief wrap itself around his shoulders like a cloak. He felt drunk, unable to think of anything clearly. His mind was jumbled with all that he had to do: collect Poppy a clean nightie, pick her up a magazine that he could read to her. Then the thoughts settled and he felt the sledgehammer to his gut as he remembered he needed to do neither of those things. ‘Oh God.’ He kept repeating it over and over. ‘Oh God.’ But it didn’t help make anything seem real. He drove home in their car, to their home, but it would never be theirs again. She was gone.

  He had no recollection of the journey, navigating the lanes and their turns like a robot. He stopped the car outside the house and switched off the engine. Looking down, he saw one of her hairbands on the gear stick. Gently, he eased it off and held it to his mouth and then under his nose, registering the vaguest scent of her shampoo and perfume. He inhaled deeply as his tears gathered. He cried loudly, his tears coming so hard and so fast he thought he might drown.

  Claudia saw the car and drew the curtains, wanting to leave him alone for as long as possible before the kids spotted him. Once he set foot over the threshold, their lives would never be the same.

  ‘Why are you shutting the curtains?’ Peg asked from the table, where she was making a half-hearted attempt at her homework.

  ‘I thought I’d cosy things up a bit.’

  Half an hour later, Martin put his key in the front door. He was pale, with swollen eyes; a broken man.

  ‘Daddy!’ Max shouted from the kitchen.

  Peg slid from the chair and walked towards him. Martin sank down on to the sofa and Peg stood in front of him.

  She clenched her fists by her sides and l
ifted her chin. ‘How’s my mum?’ she asked.

  Martin would never forget the next few moments. He lifted his eyes to face his daughter and placed his large hands over her tightly coiled fists.

  ‘She is very, very peaceful now, Peg. She just went to sleep and she has stopped hurting.’ Martin hung his head as the next wave of tears came flooding out.

  ‘Is she dead?’

  Martin nodded, unable to say the words.

  ‘Will I ever see her again?’ Peg’s voice was small.

  ‘I think so…’ He tried his best to smile through his tears. ‘One day. Your mum will be waiting for you. She loved you so much and she would never ever have chosen to leave you.’

  Peg stepped forward and into her dad’s arms as her tears finally came. ‘That’s what she told me.’

  Peg sat in her dad’s embrace while Max cried into Claudia’s neck. He was too little to know what was going on, but he cried because everyone else was and it was quite frightening.

  ‘I’ve just remembered, Dad, I have to get you something.’ Peg wriggled from his lap and ran up the stairs.

  Martin swiped at his face and took deep breaths, only able to picture the last image of his wife, still and pale, but beautiful, always beautiful.

  Peg came down the stairs and handed Martin a pale cream envelope. ‘Mummy said I had to give you this today and she said you had to read it upstairs on your own.’

  Martin took it between his palms and trod the stairs to the bedroom. Sinking down onto the bed, he slipped his finger inside the flap and lifted the paper from the envelope.

  Mart, my love,