by Jo Walton
“You can try,” Trish said.
But by the weekend when Cathy called again she had forgotten. It had all drained out of her mind as if it had never happened. She heard Cathy’s voice and answered “How are you, darling? How’s Jamie?” She remembered almost at once, as soon as she heard the tone of Cathy’s voice change, but by then it was too late. She deserved everything Cathy called her, unkind as it was. She should never have forgotten. She wouldn’t have believed it was possible that she could, except that somehow she had.
She went downstairs to Bethany. “I’m going senile. I’m going like my mother was.”
“What have you done now?” Bethany asked.
“Have I said that before?” Trish asked, appalled.
“Only hundreds of times,” Bethany said. “What is it?
Trish told her about Jamie, and about forgetting. “I didn’t say anything at home because of the twins. They’ll have to know, but I didn’t know how to tell them, and then I just—it went out of my mind.”
“Cathy will never forgive that,” Bethany said. “But it’s not your fault, Trish, you know it isn’t. It’s no more your fault than if you had Parkinson’s and you dropped a cup and it broke. It’s a medical symptom.”
“I do blame myself. And you’re right that she’ll never forgive me. She’s always been the most difficult of them, and now she’ll be sure I’m a senile old fool and not fit to have charge of myself never mind the twins.”
“I’m here for the twins if it comes to that,” Bethany said. “And Helen and Don. You’re not in sole charge. And you’re not dangerously forgetful anyway. You do forget things, but you’re all right.”
“The Mac helps a lot,” Trish said. “It’s a godsend. And so are you, Bethany. I don’t know how I’d manage without you.”
“Well, I’m here,” Bethany said.
31
I Hope I Forget: Pat 1992–1999
Philip took a course and trained as a carer for disabled people. “There were very few places, and I’m sure I got into it entirely by explaining that my mother was a double amputee who had been in a wheelchair since I was four years old,” he said.
Bee laughed. “Why do you want to do it?” she asked. “Couldn’t you teach, like Sanchia, or do casual work like Ragnar?”
“I could, but I’d rather help people,” Philip said. “I need something to bring in money, and this is good money and odd hours, just what I want. Casual work is boring and pointless, and teaching is soul-destroying. And once I have the qualification I can do this anywhere in Europe. If I happen to have three days free in Heidelberg or Venice I can pick up some caring work there.”
“Teaching can actually be rewarding,” Bee pointed out.
Philip blushed. “Your kind of teaching, of course, or even Mum’s, but teaching music to beginners is what I meant. I’ve seen it grinding Sanchia down.”
Things went on as they were. Pat grew more forgetful and started relying on lists again as she had when the children were young. She stopped driving because she felt she wasn’t safe, and she stopped writing and updating her guidebooks after the final update of the Rome books in 1994. She handed on all her materials to a young writer Constable recommended who would keep them going. “They’re an institution,” her editor said. The new girl seemed impossibly young, but she was older than Pat had been when she had written the first Florence book. “And she loves Italy. That’s her real qualification,” Pat told Bee.
In 1998 Jinny announced that she was getting married to a contractor called Francesco. Pat and Bee rushed off to Florence at Easter to meet him and his family. He was younger than Jinny and had typical Italian good looks. “I’d like to sculpt him,” she confided. “If I did, would you mind if I put it in the courtyard?”
“Better ask him. It’s your house now,” Pat said.
“A contractor, eh?” Bee said. “Maybe we can finally get a stairlift put in. And a recharger so I could bring the electric wheelchair to Italy, maybe?”
The wedding was arranged for July, when they would be in Florence as usual.
Pat was reading the new Margaret Drabble when Philip called with news of his own. “Sanchia’s pregnant,” he said.
“Whose is it?” she asked.
“We don’t know and we don’t care,” Philip said.
“Of course. Well, congratulations.”
“I’m a little overwhelmed. Remember how surprised I was to find I was an uncle? Finding I’m going to be a father is even more overwhelming. Oh, and write this down right now, Mum! I don’t want you forgetting to tell Mamma! Where is she anyway?”
“She went somewhere, I forget,” Pat said. “Maybe physio? Is it Wednesday?”
“It’s Thursday,” Philip said. “Have you written it down?”
“Yes,” Pat said, writing it down carefully. “I’ll tell her the second she comes in. Will you all come to Italy for Jinny’s wedding?”
“I will absolutely come, and I think I can speak for the other two in saying they will want to be there and will come unless there’s something that absolutely prevents them—I know Ragnar has a performance in Helsinki sometime this summer but I can’t remember when.”
Pat sat and waited for Bee to come home, her notebook on her lap. As soon as she heard the car she got up and went out. “Sanchia’s pregnant!” she called, as soon as Bee was out of the car. The new car allowed Bee to drive it in her chair.
“Who’s the father, or don’t they care?” Bee asked.
“I think they said they don’t care. And Philip said he’d come to Jinny’s wedding,” Pat said.
Then as she came close enough, Pat saw Bee’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“I did think about not telling you, because this isn’t something I want to tell you over and over, love. But it’s fucking anaplastic thyroid cancer, the same as Michael had, and Lorna.”
“Oh Bee, no.” Pat found she was sitting on the ground on the drive with no idea how she had got there. “How are we going to manage?”
“You forgot where I was going, didn’t you?”
“I did.” Pat looked up at Bee. “Have they developed any better treatment?”
“Nope. Six to nine months if we do nothing, six to nine months if we mess about with surgeries and chemo.”
“It’s March…”
“It’s April,” Bee said. “Get up from there and make me some dinner. I’ll make Jinny’s wedding, that’s one thing. I’ll be glad to see her settled. I thought she never would be, over thirty and nobody serious.”
“Bee, you’re talking as if—”
“Well, how do you want me to talk? Like a tragedy? There’s nothing I can do about it. If you like I’ll say we’re totally doomed—I’m dying and you’re going senile, and I think I have the best of it. But what good does that do? Might as well live while we can. Dinner while I can still eat. Sex while we can still enjoy it. Music. Let’s sing together after supper. Graft a few plants and see if I can make some new ones that produce more oxygen for the Mars mission. See Jinny married, maybe see Sanchia’s baby if I’m very lucky.”
“Oh Bee,” Pat said, getting up carefully. “What am I going to do without you?”
“I have no idea. So let’s enjoy the time we have left.”
“Do you want to go to Florence?”
“I want to go in the summer when we always go. For Jinny’s wedding, for the summer. Then I want to come home when we always do, and be here where I have the conservatory all set up to work in. I want to go on as normal as best we can—but Pat? Please try to remember this, because if you forget and I have to tell you again and again it’s going to drive me mad.” Bee’s chair hummed off indoors and Pat followed.
“I’ll try to remember,” Pat said. “I don’t see how I could forget, as it’s the worst news I’ve ever had, but there seems to be no control over what I forget and what I remember.”
“I do know you can’t help it,” Bee said. “I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with the cancer, with the
stupid Americans who just had to retaliate with an H-bomb and no thought about the winds and who they were hurting, with the equally stupid Russians who thought they could get respect by taking out Miami, and with the Indians and the Chinese. This could be from that just as easily. We’ve only got one habitable planet and it’s so fragile, and we keep on screwing it up. Dropping nukes and burning oil. That’s what makes me angry, not your infirmity.”
“I don’t want to be like my mother,” Pat said.
“You’re going to be seventy next year, and you’re a million times better than she was at that age,” Bee said.
Jinny’s wedding took place in Santa Maria Novella, a wonderful Renaissance church near the railway station in Florence. Jinny had gone through the forms of conversion to Catholicism especially so that she could get married there. (“Though I don’t mind promising to bring the children up in the faith if it means they can be baptized in the Baptistery,” she had said quietly to her mothers the night before.) She piled her dark hair up on top of her head, which made her look very like Bee. Jinny had the same plain square friendly face. Francesco was bringing all the beauty, Pat thought, and hoped Jinny wasn’t bringing absolutely all the brains. Philip gave Jinny away as he had given Flora away. Sanchia, visibly pregnant, and Ragnar were there. Sammy, twelve years old now, was a bridesmaid, along with three of Francesco’s nieces. Flora was matron of honor. Mohammed looked proud of her. It was the first time either of them had been in Florence since their honeymoon.
Pat prayed for Jinny and Francesco, and for Flora and Mohammed, and for Philip and Sanchia and Ragnar, and for all her grandchildren born and unborn. She thanked God for them and for Bee, and prayed that Bee might be cured by a miracle. Looking up at Botticelli’s nativity scene, anything seemed possible. “Come on, God, you can do it,” Pat prayed. “St. Zenobius, patron of Florence, you healed a dead elm tree, and Bee loves elm trees. You could heal her, couldn’t you?”
They had the reception in the garden of their house, though it was a crush with all of Jinny’s Florentine friends. She had built houses for half of them, it seemed. They were going to honeymoon on the Adriatic coast.
“This will probably be the last time the whole family will be together,” Bee said, hoarsely, when she made her toast. Pat remembered how wonderful Bee’s singing voice had been. “It’s not the whole family, of course, without Michael, but he’s buried here so that’s as close as we can come. I’d like to propose a toast to our family, while we still can.”
Pat had never forgotten that Bee was dying. She wished she could forget it. Instead she woke in the night remembering it, overcome by a sense of dread.
Jinny and Francesco departed for their honeymoon. The rest of them stayed on in the Florentine house for a few weeks.
Pat walked around Florence with Sammy and Cenk, telling them stories and showing them things. She fed them gelatos and granitas. She took them to the Uffizi, which had finally installed a lift. Bee could see the Botticellis again. “You’re the one who cares about them,” Bee muttered, but she did not turn down the opportunity to go up and see them.
She told Sammy and Cenk about Cellini as they looked at his statue of Ganymede in the Bargello. She told them that the torso was Roman and he had made the rest of it, the head and arms and legs and the eagle, and how it was a microcosm of the Renaissance, taking the Roman core and building on the rest in their own imagination. “How can she remember all this when she can’t remember where to meet us for lunch?” Flora asked Bee.
“She’s known all this forever,” Bee rasped.
Sammy and Cenk took to Florence as the children always had. Before long they were begging Flora to let them stay longer and for just one more gelato. “They can stay for the summer with us, if you like,” Pat offered.
“If there’s room for me to stay as well,” Flora said. Mohammed went home, and Ragnar went off to his engagement in Finland, but the rest of them stayed. Jinny and Francesco came home, and Flora took the children back to England for the new school term. Philip and Sanchia left, and eventually one evening as they sat on the patio alone after Jinny had gone to bed Bee told Pat that it was time for them to be going.
“I want to die at home. I’ve only been lingering because I just can’t bear the thought that it’s the last time you’ll ever see Florence. I tried to get Flora and Philip to promise to bring you but they wouldn’t. You can forget that if you like. In fact it’s better if you do. If you think you’ll be back next year like always.”
“I could come back,” Pat said. “Unless I forgot about changing trains somewhere.”
“Somebody would need to go with you,” Bee said. Her voice was very hoarse now. “Look, I know you’ll probably forget, but I do want you to know this even if you can’t hold on to it. I’ve arranged for what’s going to happen to you after I die. You’re going to go into a home in Lancaster, near Flora. I tried to get something here but you won’t believe the prices in Italy. And you’ve forgotten Italian and the nurses wouldn’t speak English, so England is probably better.”
“Near Flora,” Pat said. “Not so far from Philip too. It won’t be so bad.”
“Jinny has promised to come over and help you move,” Bee said. She scrubbed away a tear. “I could keep on looking after you at home and bringing you here every summer forever if it wasn’t for this stupid stupid cancer. It’s the worst thing about dying. I’ve had a good life, with you and the children and my work. It would have been better if I’d kept my legs, but I’ve managed without. I made the serum for the elm trees. I made plants that are being used in space.”
“You’ve done a lot, accomplished really important things,” Pat said. “And we’ve been so happy.” She reached across and took Bee’s hand, Bee gripped it firmly.
“We have been happy,” Bee said.
“And I know you’d have kept on looking after me,” Pat said. “Couldn’t we just … drive the car off a cliff somewhere on the way home? Wouldn’t it make more sense? For both of us?”
“I wish we could,” Bee said. “But we flew, remember? And Cambridge is rather lacking in cliffs.”
“But I could linger on for years,” said Pat, appalled.
“I know. I’m sorry. Look, tomorrow is our last day. You should do all your special Florence things. We both should. For the last time.”
“Yes, we must, all our special things,” Pat said. Then she was quiet for a while, though she kept her grip on Bee’s hand. “Bee? I hope I forget.”
32
Google: Trish 1998–2015
The next time George and Sophie came home from the moon they took the twins back permanently. The twins were eleven, ready to start secondary school. She had hoped they might go to the excellent local schools in Lancaster, but George had heard from Cathy and didn’t regard her as really capable of looking after the twins any more. “I’ve found schools for them in Cambridge where they can go in as day pupils when we’re home and board when we’re not. They can come here, or to Helen’s, for holidays.” George was being brisk with her and the children. He was probably right that she wasn’t capable. “I know it’s been a lot to ask of you, Mum,” meant that. She was being punished for forgetting about Jamie by losing the twins. Or maybe she was imagining it, maybe this would have happened anyway.
“They will come to see me?” she asked, hearing herself sounding pathetic and cutting herself off.
“Of course, Mum, we’ll all come to see you.”
“How will you manage, Gran?” Rhodri asked as his father was taking an armload of bags to the car.
“I’ve got the Mac all set up,” she said. “And Bethany will be here. Your dad’s right, you shouldn’t really be helping me.”
“We liked it,” Rhodri said.
With that she had to be content. She wrote it down in the diary program on the Mac so she could remember it, or at least look at it and see it again. She emailed Rhodri and Bronwen, and they emailed her—at first frequently and then less often as they settled into thei
r new schools and got used to living with their parents again.
The Mac and Bethany mostly kept her on track, but she got caught out now and then. She’d be told something, write it down, and forget to transfer it to the computer. Then she’d forget all about it. Helen was used to her, but Cathy and George only visited occasionally and were shocked.
They might have let her carry on living at home if it hadn’t been for the university expansion. The government were funding extra places at all universities, and Lancaster was taking advantage of that to build new libraries and lecture theaters and halls. Bethany was planning officer of the new Green-dominated council, and she told Trish all about it, sometimes several times. The problem was that the university didn’t have enough space in the halls of residence for all the new students. They hadn’t even had enough room for all the students they’d had before. Students had always lived in town, and in Morecambe, and in the countryside around. But now there was a new influx, and housing was in demand. House prices rocketed. Trish’s house, which they had bought in 1968, had been fully paid off since 1988. It had always been too big for most people, but it was now worth a fortune to the developers.
“Have you thought of moving somewhere smaller, Mum?” Helen asked.
“Where would I put my teapots?” Trish asked, looking at her mother’s china on the open shelves.
Cathy came up and tried. “This house has appreciated a great deal. You could move somewhere small and comfortable and free up a great deal of capital.”
“Anyone would know you were a banker,” Trish said.
“So how about it?”
“I like this house.”
Eventually the three children ganged up on her. They all sat around the kitchen table and proposed it again. “But where will Bethany go?” she protested.
“That’s Bethany’s problem,” Cathy said.
