Beneath the Surface

by Heidi Perks

  Nowadays Kathryn didn’t smile as much. More and more she was morphing into a ghost mother, one whose face was plastered into an uptight expression, always looking as if she expected something to jump out and bite her. On the days when they visited Grandma now, she would apply a jolly appearance, almost in contrast to the way she used to be on visits when Hannah and Lauren were children. But the act didn’t fool Hannah. She could see that beneath the fake smile and shrill laugh the nurses would see later, her mum wasn’t comfortable visiting Eleanor any more than she herself had ever been.

  If her grandmother was once all-powerful, she should see herself now for she was a far cry from being lady of the manor anymore. And she was far from present in her own mind, let alone anywhere else.

  Once upon a time Eleanor had been a glamorous woman. She was tall and held herself so upright the girls used to imagine there was a pole attached to her back. They rarely saw her without make-up, her eyelids coated in a steely grey powder and a thick layer of red painted onto her lips. Her hair was always set into a position that never moved and a string of pearls hung around her neck, sticking out where they caught the sharp points of her collarbone. Eleanor had never looked like a grandma, or even an old woman. Always she was immaculately presented to the outside world. But since she had been in the home they had watched everything that had ever made her elegant rapidly ebb away.

  *****

  The sound of her mother’s fingers tapping against the steering wheel in a monotonous drum was beginning to grate. Since the start of the journey, when Kathryn was fretting about everything, she hadn’t spoken a word. Her eyes remained focused on the road ahead, her rigid body arched forward as if prepared for an animal to spring out in front of the car. Occasionally she glanced towards the cake but then her head would snap back into position. Refocused. It was hard to imagine what she was thinking about. Aside from the obvious – worrying about her own mother’s ailing health, worrying the girls might do something outrageous like want to go on a date, or come home past ten at night. Aside from all that, it was almost impossible for Hannah to guess what went on inside Kathryn’s head.

  Only that morning Lauren had asked her if she was OK and how she felt about visiting Grandma. Kathryn had swung around, a U-shaped smile glued to her face, and said, ‘I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘But Mum, you must be wondering how she’s going to be today or—’

  ‘Oh, nonsense! Of course not, I’m looking forward to seeing her,’ she murmured cheerfully. ‘Now, where is your present for her, Lauren?’

  ‘It’s right here,’ Lauren muttered.

  Hannah wanted to shake some sense into her. Anyone with half a brain could see she wasn’t looking forward to it. If only she would tell them how she really felt about Eleanor maybe they would get somewhere close towards knowing what made her tick. Was Kathryn scared Eleanor was ill and might die? Was she angry that she was no longer the mother she used to be? Did she even like her? Hannah wished she would stop wasting time trying to shield them from everything and be honest. She was so busy building up barriers, she wasn’t letting the girls get close to her.

  But denial was a happy place where their mother lived. The day she told the girls their grandma was moving into a home, she wrapped the news up in shiny paper and added a bow to the top – ‘It will be lovely for her, lots of other people her age to befriend and play Scrabble with.’ They had never seen their grandma play Scrabble in her life. Why she would want to take it up in a nursing home was anyone’s guess. At first the girls thought their mother was acting that way for their sake, to protect them from knowing the truth, but now Hannah considered it was more likely she simply hadn’t accepted it.

  Kathryn could be so childlike in her ways, and the way she idolised Grandma was odd. On nights when they were staying at her house, the girls would sit on the marble landing where the double stairways met and listen. Hanging their legs through the balustrade they could hear Eleanor chipping away at their mum below. ‘I would never allow those girls to do half the things they do if they were my children,’ she once said. ‘Running around the halls, screeching. And they have no manners.’

  ‘They do have manners, Mother. It’s just children these days aren’t the same as when I was younger.’

  ‘Nonsense! It’s you, you’re too weak with them. You let them run all over you. If you aren’t careful, you know what will happen.’

  The girls had looked at each other and shrugged. They had no idea what might happen but they didn’t like the threat in Eleanor’s voice. Hannah reached over and squeezed Lauren’s hand and they tiptoed back to their beds, desperate to hide beneath the covers and shield themselves from her. She sent fear running through them, and Hannah hated that their mum allowed it.

  Shuddering at the memory she put her headphones on. Grandma wasn’t a threat to them anymore. In an attempt to zone out for the rest of the journey to Elms Home, Hannah focused instead on what she wanted out of the summer, mentally listing: Leave the Bay; Look for my dad.

  She glanced at Lauren, who was still engrossed in her book, and wondered how her sister appeared to switch off. Lauren didn’t like Eleanor any more than Hannah, but she never wound herself up to the same extent. ‘Lauren is much more placid,’ she once heard her grandmother remark to an afternoon guest at Lordavale. ‘Hannah is the fiery one.’ She preferred the notion of having fire running through her veins – it meant she was likely to do something with her life. She wouldn’t settle for Mull Bay for the rest of her days, as her mother hoped she would.

  *****

  ‘Here we are, girls!’ Kathryn sang out as they turned into the sweeping driveway.

  Elms Home was a beautiful house, too good for Grandma, Hannah always thought whenever they drove slowly through the gated entrance and over the speed bumps. They got out of the car and waited for their mum to carefully lift the birthday cake from the passenger seat. It wasn’t a homemade cake but purchased from a bakery the day before. Hannah was grateful they hadn’t been made to invest an afternoon up to their elbows in flour but she wouldn’t have been surprised if the cake was passed off to the nurses as one of their own: little things like that showed more love and care. Apparently.

  ‘Come on then, let’s go in.’ Kathryn smiled at the girls and then up at the building. ‘I expect Grandma is waiting for us all,’ she added wistfully, the words catching ever so slightly in her breath.

  Hannah glanced at Lauren, who shrugged in return. Both knew their grandmother would be doing nothing of the sort.

  At the door they were greeted by Patricia, the nurse in charge of Eleanor. In her fifties, she looked every bit the cliché of a matron. If she hadn’t chosen to be a nurse, then one way or another a nursing home would have found its way to her. She was always delighted to see the girls, bombarding them with questions about what they were up to. Hannah often wondered what bad things Patricia must have done in a past life to end up looking after Eleanor.

  ‘Here come the girls!’ she called from the doorway, her face beaming. ‘How lovely to see you all, good journey?’

  ‘Wonderful, thank you,’ Kathryn beamed back.

  Hannah and Lauren both stepped forward, allowing Patricia to kiss them on the cheek. ‘And how are my favourite twins today?’ she asked. ‘You look more alike every time I see you.’

  Kathryn carried on grinning inanely as she prodded the girls into the hallway. ‘Where is Mother today?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s in the living room.’ Patricia nodded towards the doors at the far end. ‘We have the patio doors open in there as it’s such a lovely day. You can take her through to the garden later, if you’d like.’

  ‘Oh, that would be lovely, girls, wouldn’t it?’ Kathryn exclaimed enthusiastically, walking towards the lounge. ‘Oh yes, I can see her already. Look, there she is, by the window. And could we have some plates, please?’ She turned to Patricia. ‘I’ve made a cake for Mother.’

  Patricia nodded. ‘I’ve even laid out some games to
play, if anyone’s up for it,’ she called out behind her as she retreated to the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, that sounds perfect, doesn’t it?’ Kathryn said.

  ‘Yes, a perfect little birthday party for the old witch,’ Hannah muttered under her breath.

  Eleanor had her back to them as they entered the living room. An apt way for her to greet them, Hannah considered.

  ‘Hello, Mother,’ Kathryn called out as she walked around to face her. ‘Happy birthday! We’ve brought you some gifts and a cake, look.’

  Hannah and Lauren shuffled alongside their mother and Hannah held her breath as she waited for the inevitable. It was hard to know what Kathryn expected because she always looked so foolishly hopeful.

  Eleanor held her gaze, looking out beyond them into the gardens as if not even aware of their arrival. When finally she moved her head she stared at each of them in turn, not smiling, her face registering no emotion at all.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked eventually, fixing her focus on Kathryn.

  Hannah and Lauren both turned to their mum, who continued smiling. How brave, anyone else would think. What a strong woman. But neither of them missed the signs: the sharp intake of breath, the hand gripping the side of the chair Eleanor sat in, the eyes clouding and blinking hard.

  ‘There must be a ton of emotions boiling up inside her,’ Lauren confided in Hannah later. ‘I would just want to scream if I was Mum.’

  ‘Yet she never does,’ Hannah observed, which always made her wonder what might happen when those emotions eventually boiled over.

  – Eight –

  The morning it was confirmed to Kathryn that her mother had Alzheimer’s was one blustery autumn day the previous October. She remembered it well because she had gone to the home on her own that time. The girls were at school, and Joanne Potts, Elms Home’s manager, had called her the day before, asking to see her. It was important, she told her, and it would be better if Kathryn could make it that week.

  Kathryn made a point of murmuring and flicking through her diary but eventually said, ‘I suppose I could move a few things around and come tomorrow, if that suits?’ They agreed a time and Kathryn wrote the appointment onto the blank page. She kept her voice light as she said goodbye; she didn’t want them thinking she was unduly concerned, but meanwhile her insides were doing somersaults. Of course she knew what was coming.

  At the end of the visit Kathryn closed the door to the home behind her. Her face was the blank canvas it had been when she arrived an hour earlier. As she walked towards her car, the gravel crunching beneath her feet, the wind suddenly picked up and leaves whipped around her as if in some kind of frenzy. Kathryn stood still and held her arms out to her sides; she lifted her face to the sky and let the world spin around her. The whole scene seemed quite fitting and she was almost comforted by it. It felt as if the universe was balanced, the turmoil inside her mother’s brain was recreated outside. But on the other hand, she realised how great her own sense of turmoil was becoming, because if her mother was no longer able to command her, she had absolutely no idea what direction she should be heading in.

  The nurses hadn’t understood her analogy about the universe. They appeared anxious when they came out to check on her. Twenty minutes they said she was standing there, without moving. Of course it hadn’t been that long. They were always exaggerating.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK, Kathryn?’ they asked, their faces perfecting a look of concern. ‘Do you want to come back inside for a moment?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she insisted. ‘I’m perfectly fine.’

  But of course she wasn’t fine. How foolish of them to even ask. She didn’t trust the nurses who worked there, particularly Patricia, who always seemed far too happy and too interested in their lives for her liking. She also didn’t like the way they treated her mother, like a child who didn’t know her own mind.

  *****

  The night of Eleanor’s birthday, once both the girls had gone to bed, Kathryn sat on the stone seat at the end of her back garden and took a cigarette out of its packet. Her thin fingers shook as she held onto it, placing it between her lips as she fumbled to flick the lighter with her other hand. Once lit, she drew a deep breath, inhaling the smoke, and for the first time that day felt like she could breathe again. She wished she could relive that feeling she had had last autumn. The universe no longer felt balanced. Every day that passed meant another fragment of Eleanor’s mind was chipped away. Lost for ever. It didn’t make sense that a mind, once so strong, could end up like that.

  Eleanor’s birthday was a particularly difficult visit. Her own mother not recognising her – she might as well have risen from her chair and kicked Kathryn in the stomach. A small part of Kathryn wished she had let her guard down, even for that one moment. It would have been such a relief to scream, ‘What the hell do you mean, asking who I am? I’m your daughter, who has visited you every week since you’ve been in this home!’ Or even to cry and let someone else pick her up and carry her off, tell her everything was of course going to be OK and this was what they were going to do about it. But she hadn’t done either of those things. Instead she had stood there smiling back at her mother like an idiot, like it was the most obvious question in the world to be asked, and it didn’t bother her one bit.

  Why did she do that? It was a question that had been asked of her over the years. Why did she let her mother turn her into a shadow of the woman she could be? They told her she was foolish, some of them, that she was weak. They told her many things. But no one knew Eleanor like she did.

  Some days were easier; some days her mother knew who Kathryn was. Some days they held conversations, although increasingly they were about trivial and irrelevant things. Like the one they had had a month ago when Kathryn asked her advice about whether or not she should let Lauren go out in her friend’s car. The girl had only passed her test three weeks before and it was blindingly obvious to her that Lauren shouldn’t go anywhere near it. But still she wanted to do the right thing, to make sure she wasn’t alienating her daughters by giving them some freedom. As always, Kathryn had driven to the home with hope in her heart. Hope that Eleanor would be communicative. And at first it had seemed like she was going to be. But no sooner had she asked her opinion than Eleanor began talking about Maureen, who, by all accounts, had worn the same shoes for so many months she had worn holes in the bottom of them. And no one was doing anything about it.

  ‘Who is Maureen, Mother?’ Kathryn asked patiently.

  Eleanor shrugged. ‘What does it matter anyway?’ she sighed.

  What did any of it matter? Long gone were the days when Eleanor told Kathryn what she should do. Her mother had always been her pillar of strength and decision. Even when she was little, people had laughed and said that one day she would need to be surgically removed from Eleanor’s skirt tails. But they didn’t understand that if you had a mother like that, there was little you could do about it even if you wanted to.

  Wrapping the lighter into a handkerchief, Kathryn tucked it back in her dressing gown pocket. She finished her cigarette and stubbed out the end on the stone beside her, folding a tissue around the butt before throwing it in the bin. Lifting her hands to her nose, she grimaced at the smell because actually the thought of smoking disgusted her. It’s a horrible habit, she drummed into the girls. They knew well enough there would be consequences if she caught either of them with cigarettes.

  Kathryn went into the house and scrubbed her hands with vigour until the scent of rose and jasmine almost masked that of stale smoke. It would be her last, she decided, her thumb rubbing against the lighter in her pocket. It would be best just to throw the whole damn lot away, she could deal with things some other way. But Kathryn had never been much good at dealing with anything.

  But she had been feeling better and the searing burn of anxiety that shot through her stomach like a knife had all but gone. Then she started to feel its familiar sting once again. The morning after that blustery day she awoke with a
sense of unease and it had since rarely left her side. Nowadays nearly every morning she woke with a feeling things were slightly off-kilter. It was never a good thing, to start the day with a sense of dread.

  Now Kathryn felt exposed to the world again. She had never had to worry about thinking for herself because Eleanor always did it for her. To the point where she was happy for her to do so because from an early age she had realised her opinions counted for little anyway.

  ‘I’m thinking of becoming a nurse,’ Kathryn had said when she was twelve.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Eleanor snapped. ‘You would never make a good nurse; you need to have more backbone. I could cut my hand right here and you would run away, screaming.’ She had held up her right hand and made an action of slicing it with the other.

  Kathryn returned to her bedroom and crossed off ‘nurse’ from her list. Of course her mother was probably right. She didn’t really think she would relish the sight of blood, although she couldn’t remember ever seeing much.

  And so that was the way it always was. Kathryn made a suggestion and if Eleanor didn’t agree, she accepted it. What was the point in fighting someone who was always going to win?

  But it wasn’t like that any longer. Eleanor could no longer even tell her what time of day it was and so suddenly Kathryn felt like she was facing the world and all its problems on her own. She had a future she was uncertain how to handle and a past she constantly feared would catch up with her. Being so exposed meant having to answer her own questions – like Abigail. That was one that kept cropping up lately. Images of Abigail were taunting Kathryn, and it scared her. Now her mother couldn’t give her the answer. Every time she saw Abigail’s face she found herself asking, ‘What have I done? What if I didn’t do the right thing because I never properly thought about it?’