The Sugar Men

by Ray Kingfisher

  This time both David and Judy apologized.

  ‘Some things are best kept private,’ Susannah said, words that clearly raised David’s interest rather than dampened it.

  ‘Well, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable question for a son to ask,’ he said to her. ‘This Teddy guy, did he do anything at the hotel?’

  ‘Yes. He ate a free breakfast. You want to know what he ordered?’

  ‘No. I mean, in bed.’

  ‘No. We didn’t have breakfast in bed.’

  David groaned. Susannah snorted a laugh.

  The reality was that Judy and David both knew what had happened next – well, later the next day anyhow.

  Susannah had called her daughter from Heathrow airport to tell her she was leaving, and that she would call again when she got to Wilmington airport.

  A few hours later, however, Judy got a call from a man with such practised calmness she knew something was wrong. He was from the first-aid facility at Charlotte airport. Judy’s mother had felt unwell on the plane from Heathrow to Charlotte, and had needed assistance to get off when it landed for the connecting flight to Wilmington. The first-aider wanted to take her into a local hospital for observation, but she was having none of it and insisted on getting onto the Wilmington flight because she reckoned that whatever was wrong with her, the stink of disinfectant and the sight of so many white coats would finish her off for good.

  And when Judy insisted she or David would drive the couple of hundred miles to Charlotte rather than have her get the connecting flight, she was similarly stubborn, insisting that they wouldn’t. It was a close call but eventually the first-aiders let her onto the connecting flight, and by the time she landed at Wilmington she was as weak as a newborn lamb. However, she still didn’t want to go to hospital, preferring to come home and get ‘old penguin face out to check her oil’, so that was exactly what Judy arranged. And when ‘old penguin face’ told Judy her mother only had weeks left to live she felt an anger rising up inside her that she struggled hard to keep to herself. How dare her mother go swanning around Europe and denying her children those precious extra few days.

  Now, however, having heard about what happened on her mother’s trip, Judy just felt emotionally numb. It happened gradually, as those childhood memories she’d filed under ‘forget’ suddenly took on a new significance. There was the long conversation through the bathroom door when she’d thought her mother was physically ill and kept asking her whether she could get her anything for indigestion, and her mother said nothing except that she’d be out soon. There was that time they were walking down the street together and Mother suddenly grabbed her and held her so tightly it hurt her little body – and the only thing she could connect it with was the dog’s bark that had just gone in one of her little ears and out of the other. There was that week Father was working away and Mother insisted on all three of them sleeping in the same room and double-checking that every door and window was locked – she obviously feared those shiny jackboots might catch up with her even in the 1960s. There was Mr Carlton’s comment about Mother’s drinking habits at one of their house parties, which forced a twisted but good-humoured smile from her – they must have eventually made up after the car accident because Father even read the eulogy at Mr Carlton’s funeral in ’98. And throughout it all were the jokes she and David had to put up with from their visiting school friends, astonished at the food stocks they kept.

  That made more sense now, but one thing mattered above everything else. In fact, it was the blunt instrument that was crashing through it all: Mother was dying. Judy’s thoughts tangled themselves up, her head turned to an unbearable shaking, quaking fuzz. She did the one thing she swore to herself – for Mother’s sake – she wouldn’t do now.

  She burst out crying.

  The tears leached out of her and, try as she might, she couldn’t push the damned things back in or stop more forcing their way out.

  She caught the slow blur of her mother pulling back the bed sheets and felt even worse; this wasn’t at all how she’d planned it.

  Frail as Susannah was, she slowly but surely shuffled her legs to the side so her feet dangled over the edge. Then Judy collapsed into her arms and her mother started rocking her back and forth, and for the next few minutes Judy was her mother’s little girl again.

  After those few minutes, as Judy sat there drying her face, she found her sight returning to a stinging version of its normal self. She looked straight ahead and saw David wiping his face too, which was most unlike his usual hard-nosed self, and she wondered whether he’d had the same thoughts as her about their mother’s behaviour when they’d been kids.

  Above all else, however, she wondered why the one person who should have been crying wasn’t.

  ‘I just don’t get it,’ David said, sniffling. ‘Why haven’t you told us all that before? About what happened to you in Germany and the Netherlands?’

  Susannah gave a tired shrug. ‘It was all such a long, long time ago, and I’ve spent most of my lifetime trying to forget it. There was no way I wanted to burden anyone else with it – especially not my own family.’ She looked at both of her children in turn, both still drying their eyes. ‘All right, all right,’ she said with a smirk. ‘If you’re gonna get all upset on me I’ll tell you what happened between me and Teddy.’

  She waited for their sniffles to completely finish – a mother always knows a little laughter helps with that one – then brushed a wayward lock of silver hair out of her face with her hand. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘No more teasing. Anyhow, I don’t feel well enough for more of that.’ She let out a sigh that was short in length but high on exhaustion, then her eyes glazed over as if the energy to focus wasn’t within her grasp. ‘Nothing happened,’ she said. ‘Well, nothing like that – nothing like you mean, David.’ She tightened up her already small eyes. ‘I’d taken the liberty of buying him some cotton pyjamas from Harrods too – not that I’d planned the thing, you understand.’ She smirked again and waited for her children to catch on. ‘Then we went to bed. We spent a few hours talking some more about our lives, loves and fears. But most of all he held me all night – or, at least, he was still holding me when the daylight woke us up in the morning.’

  She brought her gaze back from the distance to look at David. ‘And after we’d had breakfast together we talked some more, exchanged phone numbers and said our goodbyes. And then I checked out of the hotel and made my way to the airport.’

  ‘And that was it?’ David asked.

  Susannah nodded.

  ‘And are you going to call him?’

  ‘I expect so.’ Susannah closed her eyes and her head nestled a little more deeply down into the pillow. ‘But first I need some rest.’

  She began to breathe deeply. Judy looked to David, then nodded to the door. They quietly closed the drapes and went downstairs.

  There, Judy started making herself a drink of sweet chocolate and they talked.

  ‘How about,’ Judy said, thinking it through as she spoke, ‘how about I wait here with Mom while you go home and get a few clothes and stuff, then when you get back you can do the same for me.’

  ‘What?’ David said, screwing up his face.

  But he was her brother, so she knew when he was playing for time.

  ‘So you’re not going home now?’ she asked.

  ‘I need to stop off at the office and see how Gary’s coping alone, then get home, sure.’

  She stopped pouring the milk out for a second and turned to him face on.

  He got the message.

  ‘Why are you being like this?’ he said. ‘You know I can’t stay here when—’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, now getting on with making her drink but fully aware her face was telling a story.

  David shook his head and thrust his arms into a fold. ‘Oh, don’t be like that.’

  ‘Like what? Putting Mom first?’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ he said. ‘This is my livelihood we’re talking a
bout. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about—’

  ‘David, really.’ She snapped those two words out, then took a moment to get her voice under control. ‘Just leave it and go home. I’ll be fine on my own with Mom. You can decide what to do later.’

  He huffed and puffed and grabbed his head with his hands.

  Judy laughed.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s so funny?’ Then he started laughing too.

  ‘You used to do that thing as a kid. Mom always said it looked like you were trying to pull your own head off.’

  Then the light that had briefly shone in his face suddenly went out. He looked over to her and beneath his wrinkles she saw the fifteen-year-old in him. ‘Did you ever think,’ he said, ‘I mean, when we were kids . . . the way we were brought up . . . ?’

  And there he left the question hanging. Judy stayed still and quiet for a moment to give him the floor, but he didn’t take it.

  ‘We can talk again,’ she eventually said. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and he gave her a hug – again that was unlike him but these were strange times without precedent for them both.

  Then David left, and Judy took the drink to her mother’s bedroom. She crept over to the armchair, placed the drink next to it, and sat looking at her mother’s peaceful face for a few seconds. Then she grabbed a nearby blanket, covered her legs and torso, and closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  When Judy opened her eyes again her chocolate drink was cold with a dirty skin on top, and the sun was lighting up the drapes. But her mother seemed to be in the same position and for a moment Judy could feel her nerve endings sparking.

  ‘Mom?’ she said, then, more stridently, ‘Mom? Are you okay?’

  Then Susannah let out a groan, and Judy’s nerves settled down. Susannah stirred, gave a little stretch, and between yawns said that she’d slept well and was now hungry.

  Judy smiled inside; her mother had been granted some more precious time to spend with Judy, David and their families.

  As it turned out, for most of that time it was just the three of them, and Judy, at least, quickly started to see her mother in a new light. It was almost as if she had to get to know her all over again. She got time off work – she simply told them to stop her paycheck for the time being and that she would come back when she was ready – and David gave up just as much time too. In fact, his whole attitude noticeably changed – not immediately, but more like a slow burn so far as Judy could discern. At first he said he couldn’t spend too much time with Judy and their mother, but that it would be as much time as he could afford. Within a couple of weeks, however, he’d left the company at arm’s length to get on with itself for better or worse.

  At first, when Judy asked him how the business was going, he was very quiet and non-committal – almost sullen. It was only when his mother asked that the truth came out.

  ‘Haven’t you got to get back to work?’ she asked him as the three of them started eating in her favourite Italian restaurant a week later.

  He shook his head.

  She put her fork down and placed one of her frail hands on his shoulder. ‘I know that business means a lot to you. Have you left that old school friend of yours to run it on his own?’

  ‘Name’s Gary,’ David replied. ‘And actually . . .’

  Susannah fixed her gaze on him, then Judy swallowed and did the same.

  David didn’t look at either of them, but cut off a piece of chicken and put it in his mouth.

  ‘David?’ Judy said.

  He took a breath before saying, ‘There is no business. Not anymore.’ Then he carried on eating.

  Judy and Susannah glanced at one another.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Susannah said slowly. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It’s all to do with market segmentation, Mom. It just . . . It’s not important . . . It wasn’t viable anymore.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Susannah said.

  Then David stopped eating, rested his hands on the table, and spoke in almost light-hearted tones. ‘You know something? It isn’t. It really isn’t. It’s not good, but terrible?’ He shook his head. ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘What’ll you do?’ Judy asked.

  ‘Same as you.’

  Judy knew what meant: relying on his wife just as she was relying on her husband.

  ‘I’ll find something, don’t worry.’ He picked up his knife and prodded it towards the other two plates. ‘Now eat up, won’t you – especially you, Mom. The chicken’s delicious.’

  Judy almost started crying there and then in the restaurant. For the first time since his teenage years David had clearly fallen out of love with business and making money, and seemed almost relieved his own venture had folded – as if he’d been released for a new love.

  So from then on the three of them spent almost every minute of every valuable day together. They hardly left Wilmington – partly because Susannah had become increasingly frail, and partly because that wasn’t what it was about. It wasn’t about her making the most of her time left by cramming as much ‘life’ as possible into it; it was about the three of them and what they meant to one another.

  It was a time for reminiscing about childhood holidays, about the goofy things David and Judy did as kids, and about their father and what he’d done for all three of them. It was a time of joyous and uninhibited self-indulgence – or, at least, indulgence in their memories.

  They stuck together for four unremarkable but priceless weeks. Every day they went to one or other of their homes or to a park or zoo, or the shopping mall. They ate at fine restaurants and on a couple of days a week they saw a show or a movie.

  Judy could have been forgiven for thinking it would go on for ever, but by the end of that fourth week Susannah didn’t feel like leaving her house. So they all stayed there and spent time doing the kind of things they’d done forty or so years earlier – playing board games, watching TV together and eating together. And Susannah occasionally poked fun at David, and he always laughed.

  There were no more tears because it was a time of celebration for all those years Susannah very nearly didn’t have, and for the husband and children she nearly wasn’t around to have. She said once or twice that, for her, all of those years were a bonus in the lottery of life.

  And as she stopped feeling like going out, David and Judy became, in effect, lodgers. Judy’s husband, David’s wife, their children, and a few close friends and neighbours formed a steady stream of visitors that helped take Susannah’s mind off the pain that inexorably worsened every day. She was particularly touched when Reuben turned up; he was her final connection with her birthplace, and his visit seemed to close the circle of her life.

  The doctor, of course, was a regular visitor too. He and Susannah had a long history together, and on one occasion when she called him ‘old penguin face’ Judy thought she saw a tear drip from the corner of his eye. Again her mother declined chemotherapy, which would have prolonged her life at the cost of making her feel constantly sick, because she said she’d suffered enough for one lifetime. She did, however, accept increasing amounts of pain-relief medication – presumably for exactly the same reason.

  And then, one afternoon, when the cool breeze through the window was fluttering the drapes – as if it was trying to say summer was over – she said she was feeling particularly tired and wanted to go to bed, but didn’t want to be alone. David said she hadn’t been alone for weeks and that wasn’t about to change now.

  Judy knew what was happening and got the doctor out to check her mother over again and give her some more pain-relief medication, and while they were all gathered around the bed David asked him whether he could do anything else for her besides pain relief.

  The doctor gave the answer directly to Susannah. ‘Well, it’s a little late, but there are certain palliative drugs available that would extend . . .’ And there his words tailed off because Susannah was slowly shaking her head.

  ‘Just ignore my son,’ she said, let
ting out a wry chuckle. ‘I’ve spent too many years feeling guilty about living to feel guilty about dying now.’

  David apologized for bringing the question up, then Susannah told him not to apologize.

  Soon after that Judy had to make the most difficult phone call of her life – to call in the hospice team. They put Susannah on a morphine drip that she could control the dosage of herself, and visited every day to check on her condition. On some days she was drifting in and out of consciousness; on others it was as if there was nothing more than tiredness wrong with her.

  On one of her less good days the doctor visited again, and while she was having a nap he asked Judy and David to follow him outside into the hallway. And there, surrounded by a sixty-year chronicle of the family in photographic form, he told them what they didn’t want to know. He put on his most leaden face and said that now it was most definitely days and not weeks – and possibly not even days. Neither Judy nor David could muster much more than a thank you, and even though their mother was asleep they couldn’t wait for him to leave so they could creep back into the bedroom.

  Soon Susannah woke up again, and in spite of her weakness was able to talk just as much as ever. Judy knew there wasn’t much to talk about – they had gone over every inch of their shared history in those previous few weeks. Almost.

  It was then that David said, ‘Have you spoken to your friend, Teddy, recently?’

  Although he said it as gently as the breeze through the open window, at first Judy could feel a little anger rising, wondering whether he was implying, again, some ulterior motive of this poor old British soldier.

  But he followed it up by reaching for the phone and saying, ‘Would you like me to call him for you? We can leave you alone if you want.’

  Yes, Judy was wrong. Even at his age, it seemed the experience of the last few weeks had softened a few of his edges.

  ‘I’ve already talked to him today,’ she said.

  David’s eyes widened. ‘Oh?’