Inchworm

by Ann Kelley

  Physiotherapist

  Cardiac surgeon

  Night nurse

  Cardiac nurses

  All very simple and straightforward. Daddy says it’s best not to give photographs titles like THE NIGHT WATCH; HOPE COMES WITH THE DAWN and stuff like that. It’s mawkish and embarrassingly amateurish. So I’ve stuck to straightforward description. Daddy is having really good frames made. His grandfather’s photos and mine are having the same mounts and frames. Ivory mounts and black wood box frames. But it’s ages before the exhibition. Nearly a year.

  ‘Phone, Gussie, answer it please.’

  I’m grooming my kitten, who is lying on her back enjoying every moment. She is so sweet.

  ‘Okay, Mum, I’ve got it.’

  ‘Hello. This is the Jackson Stevens residence.’ I’d make such a good secretary. There’s no answer, though I can hear someone breathing heavily at the other end. ‘Who’s there?’ Whoever it is, is crying I think. ‘Hello? Hello?’

  ‘Give it here.’ Mum takes the phone from me.

  ‘Hello? Who is that? Agnes? Is that you? What is it? What’s happened dear?’

  I don’t think I can bear it. Precious has died.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I THINK ABOUT death quite often. My own death. I expect it will be like before I was born – nothingness, or nothing I can remember. But I prefer to think that my spirit will become something else. I think it might be wonderful to be a bee, busy at my duties each day, building a hive, sipping at nectar, buzzing into the golden hearts of roses or daisies. It would be wonderful just to be a daisy in a meadow, surrounded by buttercups and other daisies, bobbing in the breeze. I would close my petals at night and sleep, and open them each day of my life and worship the sun. Even being grass would be good, but to be a bird would be best. A white gull, skimming waves, riding the winds, swooping and swerving and calling to my mate in the dark; or a skylark ascending, singing my heart out in the blue sky above the hilly dunes, fluttering my wings and hovering over the sand, suddenly diving to my nest hidden in the marran grass.

  I think Precious might become a sunflower, his open face following the path of the sun, like a huge smile. Or maybe he has become an African bird – one that has long legs and large feet and glossy feathers. I don’t know many African birds apart from sea eagles and toucans as I wasn’t very interested in birds when I was in Kenya, which is a terrible waste. If I ever do go back to Africa I’ll definitely learn more about them. Glossy Ibis – Precious would make a wonderful Glossy Ibis. I wish I had known him better. I wish he hadn’t died.

  On the day I am not well enough to go to the funeral. It is icy and wet and so grey the sky never lightens after breakfast time. I stay in bed and Mum administers to me, bringing me hot drinks that I cannot even sip without choking with emotion.

  ‘Scrabble?’ she asks. I shake my head. Nothing, I must do nothing today, but think of Precious and his smile that is like a sunflower. I cannot bear to think of his father and sisters in Zimbabwe; his mother alone in England.

  ‘You go, Mum, you should go,’ I tell her, but she won’t leave me. She’s sent flowers – daffodils and Paper Whites, all spring flowers and I wrote a note on a card: ‘I will never forget you, Precious friend. Love, Gussie.’

  I have no idea what a Shona funeral is like. His family are Christians, I know that.

  ‘Mum, do they sing hymns, do you think?’

  ‘I expect so, and they pray. There’s a Zimbabwean poet – Ignatius Mabasa. He wrote a poem called Kana Ndafa which means When I Die. It’s about the false words in praise of the bereaved that get spoken at Shona funerals.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I’m not just a pretty face, you know.’

  ‘Say that again…’

  ‘I’m not just a pretty face.’

  ‘The title.’ I smile witheringly at her.

  ‘Kana Ndafa.’

  ‘I wish I had learned some Shona from Precious. I didn’t ask him anything.’

  ‘We must learn as much as we can, while we can,’ she said.

  ‘Yes Mum. I’ll try.’ We hold each other and weep for Precious and all the other transplant patients we have briefly known and lost. Bubba pushes her head into our faces in sympathy and I hold her, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MUM HAS BEEN to the Royal Free for her final check-up. We’re going home. Alistair can’t take time off to come for us and Daddy is away, inevitably, so we’re going by train. I like trains, anyway. I can read and watch the world fly by and play Scrabble with Mum. And I love to eat egg sandwiches for lunch.

  We get a cardboard pet-carrier from the pet shop and we fill up the birdfeeders in Daddy’s garden with seed and nuts. I leave written instructions for Daddy on how often to fill the feeders and to wash them regularly in disinfectant. Poor Mr Robin, I probably shouldn’t have tried to tame him. It’s probably my fault he was killed. I’ve left a going-away-thank-you present for Daddy – a blue tit nesting box, but neither of us can reach to nail it on the copper beech. I do hope he fixes it in the right place. It needs to be over six feet off the ground, not facing direct sun, away from cats and with branches nearby so the birds have cover when they fly to and from their nestlings.

  Bubba has breakfast and I take her out for what I hope will be her only poo of the day until we get home. I think of poor Mr Robin and hope another one will soon claim his territory. Bubba does a quick tour of the garden, climbs the fence at the end to look for goldfish and I grab her and put her in the travel box.

  Mimi has come to see us off and she and Willy help us carry our luggage from the flat to the taxi, though the cases have wheels so they only have to carry them down the steps. The driver lifts the cases into the boot. Beelzebub comes with me into the cab and I talk to her all the time so she won’t be frightened by all the strange noises and motion.

  ‘Are you sure we can’t come with you to help at Paddington?’ Mimi asks.

  ‘We’ll be fine, really.’

  ‘Don’t forget, Lara, what I said about freelancing. You could do it, darl.’

  ‘No, I won’t forget.’ They kiss. ‘Wow, is that a new ring?’

  Mimi smiles like the Cheshire cat and flashes her diamond ring at us.

  ‘My engagement ring from Willy,’ she says and squeezes his arm. He’s shaved off his beard. He looks very happy and ten years younger – no, twenty years younger. Smiles do that sometimes.

  ‘You must come for the wedding my dears. In three months – June.’

  ‘Plan it to coincide with one of Gussie’s check-ups, then.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Goodbye Willy, it has been so lovely to get to know you.’ Mum gives him Daddy’s keys. He hugs us both and kisses Mum’s hand.

  ‘It has been a privilege to know you both,’ he says. I cry. I’m no good at goodbyes. He brushes away a tear. Mimi blows her nose loudly. I wish Daddy could have been here.

  We get the driver to help with the bags and Beelzebub’s box at the other end. Mum has found out how many children he has in Iran and when he came to London, and if he likes it here, so when we leave him he is smiling and waving to us like an old friend. She’d phoned ahead for passenger assistance at the station, which means we get carried from the taxi to our train on a mechanised trolley that carries our luggage too.

  Pigeons strut on the platform, pecking at dropped crumbs and imaginary titbits. Some, with stumps instead of clawed feet, waddle lopsidedly among the crowds and managing somehow to survive. Pigeons are great survivors. They can live anywhere – snowy mountain tops, deserts, forests and jungles, savannas, in cold and heat, drought and flood. Perhaps that’s why the dove was the bird that showed Noah that the rains were over and why the dove is the emblem of peace. In the Second World War – or the First, I can’t remember which – homing pigeons were used to send messages about troop movements and the enemy kept peregrine falcons to kill the messengers. Or it might have been the other way round. Our troops had the fa
lcons and the enemy had the carrier pigeons.

  I love crowds of people when I’m not getting crushed. I like car boot sales but not jumble sales. There’s a middle-aged woman and a man in a trilby kissing by the sandwich stall. Very Brief Encounter.

  We find our seats and settle Beelzebub’s box on the floor under the table. We’re going home! It’s not the totally carefree, happy occasion I thought it would be. Daddy isn’t here; Alistair isn’t driving us. I am very sad about Precious. It’s difficult feeling happy and sad at the same time.

  At first I look out of the window at the factories and houses and back yards. I like back yards. A flock of white doves flutter like torn paper against the dark grey sky.

  We play Scrabble and I win. Time rushes by, as do the chalk White Horse on a green hill, the canals, and ancient oak trees lonely in the middle of fields. The sun breaks through the clouds and sparkles in diamonds on the wide estuary of the Exe, where wading birds sift for food in the mud. My binoculars are packed, unfortunately.

  ‘What do you want for your birthday, Mutti?’

  ‘I have everything I could possibly want, my love. You, sweetheart, you and me and the pussycats, at home together. And maybe a bottle of champagne with Alistair.’

  ‘Not Daddy?’

  ‘No, darling, sorry. Not Daddy. I think that part of my life is over.’

  ‘But not for me. He’s still my Daddy.’

  ‘Sure he is. He’ll always be your father. But not my husband.’

  ‘I was horrid to Alistair.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll understand. Don’t worry about it. Do something nice to make up for it, maybe?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know. You’ll think of something.’

  We can still see the bones of the trees but some bushes are greening up, lovely pale green leaves uncurling. At Dawlish the railway runs right next to the sea and children stand on the red beach and wave as we go by and I wave back. There’s an arch of rock in the sea and a tall thin rock standing on its own. We go slowly through tunnels. Twin black lambs run to their mother; a brown foal trots close by its mother’s flank. There’s a caravan in a field with a washing line attached to a tree where nappies flap in the breeze. We open up the packet of egg sandwiches that Mum made, and, as always, it smells like we’ve farted. And as always when I eat boiled eggs I see Paul Newman’s stomach, swollen under the pressure of eating all those eggs in The Hustler, as he lies flat and his fellow prisoners push more whole eggs into his mouth.

  I dip Willy’s homemade ginger biscuits in my tea. Mum buys a small bottle of whisky from the buffet, drinks it and closes her eyes, her feet up on the empty seat next to her, her linen napkin, that she always takes on journeys on her chest. Beelzebub has slept for most of the journey. I open her box and get her out now and then to reassure her and give her water from a plastic cup. She gets her whiskers very wet. The ticket man strokes her and asks to see her ticket. I look horrified and he laughs. The woman with the food trolley asks if Beelzebub wants a saucer of milk but I say no thanks, she gets the squits if she drinks milk. Children stop to pet her, and women go ‘Ah!’ and she loves the attention, but tires of it suddenly and yawns, so I put her back inside the felt bag in the box.

  Swans nest in long pale grasses. Stone hedges divide the little brown fields. Streams run alongside us. The sky is the colour of a dirty grey blanket.

  The next carriage is packed with standing passengers and luggage in the aisle. There’s a man with a bicycle in one of the lavatories and he won’t let anyone in. We are in First Class, a necessity rather than a treat, said Mum, as we are both recuperating and need the extra comfort. Also, she doesn’t want me to be exposed to viruses, so it’s better if I don’t mix with crowds if I can help it. I feel very grand. We get free bottled water, tea or coffee, fresh fruit and biscuits from the buffet but we have to show our tickets.

  A man over the aisle holds a bald baby. A dummy wobbles in its moon face. His wife takes the dummy out and puts a spoon of something yellow in its mouth. The baby dribbles it all over her bib and giggles. She does it again. The mother shovels it back into her smiling mouth. Some of it goes down.

  ‘Did Daddy hold me when I was a baby?’

  ‘Not much, he was scared you would break.’

  ‘Oh. Why did he think that?’

  ‘Oh, he loved you so much, I think he felt helpless because he couldn’t make you better.’ Mummy looks away out of the window so I can’t see her face. She is wearing dark glasses.

  ‘My father was much more relaxed with you. He used to throw you up in the air and catch you when you were about two. You loved it so. Do you remember?’

  ‘No.’

  I remember nothing of my babyhood, luckily. I was born with heart failure. I cried lots and didn’t feed or thrive – an unhappy baby, I’ve been told. Not now, though. I am making up for it by being extremely cheerful. Perhaps I’ve cried all the tears I am supposed to have in this life. I lean up against Mum and rub my cheek on her arm. She puts an arm around me and squeezes. I’m not crying. I am not crying. It must be frustrating being a baby and not being able to tell people what’s wrong with you. All you can do is scream.

  I was born with major heart problems and there was no cure for what I had – Pulmonary Atresia, plus one or two other faults that enabled some of my blood to circulate. Having a new heart and lungs is not a cure, only treatment for last stage heart failure, but it is definitely an improvement on the quality of life I had before – not being able to walk across the room without feeling sick and breathless; chest infections every winter and if I caught a cold.

  Large white clouds bubble up and bounce across a pale blue sky, robin egg blue. Poor Mr Robin, I feel so guilty about him. But maybe I wouldn’t have found Beelzebub if the robin hadn’t died. There’s a blue gap between clouds that looks exactly like a Scottie dog.

  I go back to reading Brett’s book – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – and realise it’s a library book. I hope he has renewed it or he’ll be in trouble when he takes it back. I lost two of Mum’s books once – or rather I left them in a garden and they got soaked so I threw them away – it’s a long story. Anyway, I ended up having to pay for them. I can’t concentrate on Zaphod Beeblebrox, as Beelzebub is mewing. I think she wants to poo. Oh, dear, yes, she is pooing. Mum takes her to the lavatory and removes the soiled newspaper pages from the box and she settles down again. What a good little traveller she is – the kitten I mean.

  I expect Douglas Adams got the name Beeblebrox from Beelzebub. They are so similar. Bubba has some water and a little kitten food and I sit her on my lap while she gives herself a good wash and brush up. At least her mother taught her to do that before she abandoned her. Poor motherless kitten, it makes me cry suddenly to think of the mother searching for her baby.

  Oh dear, I’m having another of those emotional moments.

  ‘Mum, have you noticed that Beelzebub’s eyes have turned yellow?’

  ‘Mmm.’ She nods off again.

  ‘A book must be the axe which smashes the frozen sea within us.’ Franz Kafka said that. He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and was Jewish. Willy told me that. I don’t think that HGTTG does that exactly, but it makes me laugh out loud. It still hurts when I laugh, but it’s worth it.

  Thank goodness Mum isn’t snoring; it’s so embarrassing when she does that in public.

  We are getting closer to home all the time. I put Bubba in her box, get up and walk as I haven’t had any exercise today and I’m feeling a bit sore. I go to the buffet for bottled water.

  The train manager says something unintelligible over the tannoy.

  I’m so tired. I just want to be in my bed in the attic – will I be able to climb all those stairs? I haven’t done much climbing up steps PT but I know it’s going to be easier than it was BT.

  I begin a poem about the hospital waiting room where I sat when Mum had her operation:

  An ashtray full of ash and loss.

  chai
rs sagging with too much sadness.

  Then I started thinking about the waiting rooms at my transplant hospital.

  Hospital Waiting Room

  Two low tables

  of scratched smoked glass

  overthumbed magazines

  and metal ashtrays

  sour with an odour

  of ash and loss.

  We wait.

  The chairs sigh for us.

  They have absorbed

  the sadness

  of too many people.

  They have had the stuffing

  knocked out of them.

  Emily Dickinson – who Mum loves – said: ‘If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.’

  Maybe one day I’ll be able to write poetry that takes off the top of someone’s head.

  Cows and sheep fly past the window and the wind flings crows over the hedges.

  I wonder if Mum would consider taking me somewhere exciting when I am completely recovered – like Australia? Will I be allowed to fly? I’m not sure. Maybe the USA at least? Not for a year, I know, but after that? Perhaps not to somewhere like Malaysia or Indonesia because of tropical diseases, or Africa again, but somewhere hygienic like Switzerland would be good, except that I’m not keen on mountains or snow or fir trees.

  How about Sweden? I could do a photo project on the Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman or visit the island where the writer and cartoonist Tove Jansson spent her childhood. I suppose when I start at school I’ll have to stick to school holidays for going anywhere exciting. That was one advantage of being a child with health problems – Mum always took me somewhere tropical so we had winters in the sun. When I’m a famous photographer I will be able to go anywhere and make records of anything – buildings, animals, people, landscapes.

  Brett might like me to travel with him to Australia to show me where he was born. In my dreams.

  We’ve never been to America. Yes, New York should be top of my list of places to go. It will be like being in the middle of a movie. New York cabs – Taxi; The Empire State Building – King Kong; Grand Central Station – North by Northwest; Woody Allen’s Manhattan. The entire city is a movie location. Daddy could come with us. Or if Mum doesn’t want to go, Daddy could take me on my own. (Also, in my dreams.)